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THE UGLY DUCKLING " 



JULIA 


BY 

KATHAEINE TYNAN 

AUTHOR OF 



» 1 


“THE HONOURABLE MOLLY," “THAT SWEET ENEMY,” “A DAUGHTER 
OP THE FIELDS,” “ LOVE OF SISTERS,” ETC. 


SECOND IMPRESSION 



CHICAGO 

A. C. M^CLUEG & CO. 


1905 



PRINTED BT 

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
LONDON AND BECCtES. 




1 





/ 




< 

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t 


• » 

• f « 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

PAGE 

I. 

The Ugly Duckling 

1 

II. 

The Retukn of the Heir 

13 

III. 

The Meeting in the Abbey 

... ... 25 

IV. 

Landlord and Tenant ... 

38 

V. 

That Sweet Enemy 

... ... 52 

VI. 

A Hunting Morning 

65 

VII. 

The Friend of the House ... 

76 

VIII. 

Without the Precincts 

87 

IX. 

The Mother 

101 

X. 

The Bride of Earth ... 

113 

XI. 

The Bride of Heaven 

129 

XII. 

The Knight Errant 

140 

XIII. 

The Banishment 

151 

XIV. 

The Snowball begins to Boll ... 

163 

XV. 

Donna Quixote 

175 

XVI. 

“When the Wine’s in” 

189 

xvu. 

The Course of a Slander ... 

201 

XVIII. 

The Doubt 

212 


CONTENTS 


vi 


CHAPTER 

XIX. 

Trouble ... 

PAGE 

... 224 

XX. 

A Harbour of Refuge 

236 

XXL 

New Lights 

... 248 

XXII. 

Seven Swords 

259 

XXIII. 

The Conspirators ... 

... 270 

XXIV. 

Funeral-baked Meats ... 

282 

XXV. 

The Flown Bird ... 

... 294 

XXVI. 

“Beloved, I have brought you Roses” 

306 


JULIA 


CHAPTER I 

THE UGLY DUCKLING 

Denis Driscoll MacCormac O’Kavanagh of the 
Keep, Glensaggartmore, co. Kerry, was the father of 
six daughters. 

Of these six, five were fair and buxom as their 
mother had been before them. They were very much 
admired by the country people, whose ideal of beauty 
is the blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired type. 

Of Julia, the youngest, the same people were apt 
to speak disparagingly. 

'‘Sure, God help her, isn’t she as yellow as a kite’s 
claw ? ” they would say ; “ an’ a hardy, bad breed. 
You wouldn’t be fattening her if she was to have mate 
every day for a twelvemonth.” 

Julia had heard such things said of her from the 
time she could walk alone. Among a vivacious people 
like the Irish there is safe to be a considerable 

B 


2 


JULIA 


sprinkling of malice in addition to the insensibility 
of uneducated people where personal defects are con- 
cerned. No one in Ireland can be club-footed or a 
stutterer, wide-mouthed or cross-eyed, without hear- 
ing a good deal about it. And Julia heard a good 
deal about her supposed lack of good looks, which was 
the greater offence in her case that her sisters were 
so blooming. 

The iron of it had eaten into the child's soul. It 
had made her shy of seeing strangers, lonely of nature, 
more sensitive and shrinking than she need have been, 
very distrustful of herself. But it had not made her 
bitter. She had accepted her fate of being ugly with 
entire and simple resignation. Some people had to 
be ugly as some people were given beauty. It never 
occurred to her as a cause for grievance that she only 
of all her sisters was chosen to be unsightly. 

Once she heard her sisters discussing what they 
would do when they were married. 

“ And I,” said little Julia, forgetting that she was 
the ugly one, when I am married I shall " 

What Julia would do when she was married was 
destined never to be spoken. 

“ You ! ” said Bella, the eldest sister, witheringly. 
“ No one will ever marry you. You are too ugly." 

Julia's cousin on her mother's side, Joe Quinlan, 
a rough boy, taunted her after the same manner on an 


THE UGLY DUCKLING 


3 


occasion when he had pulled her hair and made her 
cry. If he had pulled Bella’s, or Winnie’s, or Mary’s, 
or Katie’s, or Philomena’s they would have promptly 
pulled his. Julia, whose cuticle was as sensitive as 
her soul, and who was startled by the horse-play, 
simply wept. 

Go on, cry-baby ! ” said the unmannerly cousin. 
** You ought to be glad for a boy to notice you. You 
are a yellow, ugly thing, and all the people say you 
will be an old maid.” 

The speech, so far as Joe Quinlan himself was 
concerned, might have had no great power to hurt 
Julia. She was unconsciously fastidious, and Joe’s 
red hair, prominent blue eyes and very large white 
teeth, repelled her as much as his dirty finger-nails 
and his boots that smelt of the byre. Still, as repre- 
senting a masculine opinion, his speech had power to 
hurt ; and JuHa wept over it bitterly. 

She often asked herself how it was that she did 
not grow used to being so ugly, that she was still so 
sensitive about it, that a rude speech had yet such 
power to hurt. She had a great tenderness for ugly 
creatures like herself. The discarded puppy of a litter, 
the deformed kitten, doomed to drowning, were saved 
from their fate by Julia and nursed tenderly to an 
ugly maturity. When Julia read romances — and she 
had found a store of them in an unused cupboard at 


4 


JULIA 


the top of the house — she would lose herself for a time, 
and then remember and shrink from the accusing eyes 
of the magnificent heroes. “ Alas ! such things are not 
for me,” she would sigh, while the glamour faded from 
off her story-book. 

The sensitiveness might perhaps have permanently 
injured her whole nature — there were times when JuHa 
felt as though she must creep through life like a dog 
that is afraid of a stone — if her grandmother had not 
made all the difference. 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh was the mistress of her son’s 
household. She had never ceased to be mistress for 
an hour, even while his pink-and-white doll-wife, as 
the old woman called her in her contemptuous 
thoughts, was nominally mistress. Not Bella, nor any 
of the other girls, would ever dispute her mistress- 
ship so long as she lived. She had had a contemptuous 
tolerance of Denis’s odd infatuation — in which his 
deeper nature had never for a moment been involved — 
for Kosy Quinlan, as she still called her daughter-in- 
law in her own mind. Men must needs be fools 
sometimes. She was tolerant to many things which 
one would have thought she could not have under- 
stood, since they were so far removed from her own 
possibilities. She was tolerant of her rosy grand- 
daughters and their flirtations, their little vanities, and 
vulgarities, and folHes. Only for Julia she had 


THE UGLY DUCKLING 


5 


something deeper, more passionate than tolerance. 
Julia was no child of Kosy Quinlan’s at all, she had 
said to herself in proud exultation. 

At the crucial moment of Julia’s despair with 
herself — the theologians were wise who set despair 
as the corresponding sin to presumption — the grand- 
mother stepped in. She had found Julia in tears, and 
had wrung from her the secret of her sensitiveness, 
which the child had kept guarded with her two hands 
close above her heart. 

“ Come with me, Julia,” she said. 

The house was very quiet. A sweet, warm smell 
of ironing linen which had been sun-dried came up 
the stairs from the kitchen. Julia’s sisters were out 
at some merry-making. Their grandmother had been 
ironing their clean print and muslin frocks. She was 
a past-mistress in the art of “getting-up,” and she 
did all the fine things of the week’s laundry with her 
own hands. 

She took Julia’s hand in hers with a fondness she 
did not often show her, and they went down the 
stairs side by side. The ticking of the eight-day clock 
made quite a noise in the sunny, silent house. They 
went into the parlour, which was too fine to be used 
every day, and was associated, in Julia’s mind, with 
tea-drinkings and other uncomfortable merry-makings. 

The chairs were like sheeted ghosts in their light 


6 


JULIA 


chintz coverings, which old Mrs. O’Kavanagh calendered 
once a year. The mirror above the chimney-piece 
had a swathing of yellow gauze. There were white 
shavings with a coil of silver in the grate. The walls 
were decked with the impossible drawings of Julians 
sisters which they had brought home from the Convent 
School ; their Berlin-wool work was on the backs of the 
chairs. The Brussels carpet had a pattern of cabbage- 
roses and enormous ferns. There was a prevailing smell 
of dampness and closeness, for the windows were seldom 
opened. Only the old chintz of the chairs and the old 
china in the corner cupboard relieved the room from 
positive ugliness ; and, perhaps, the picture of Sir 
Mortimer O’Kavanagh above the mantelpiece. 

Sir Mortimer had been the Queen’s O’Kavanagh 
in the days before there was fighting to be done. His 
ruff, his doublet, his trunk hose, his pointed beard, 
were in the fashion of the great Queen’s court. He 
was the Queen’s O’Kavanagh till there was fighting 
to be done. Then he had fiung off his silkenness and 
fought with the Desmond, and died with him. His 
younger son had taken the estates, and there had 
still been a Queen’s O’Kavanagh ; while Eoderick, the 
elder, had been proscribed, and had sunk into poverty 
and obscurity. 

Look at Sir Murty ! ” said the grandmother. 

J ulia had been looking at Sir Murty from the time 


THE UGLY DUCKLING 


7 


she had been old enough to understand anything, with 
an awe and reverence equal to the grandmother's own. 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh had been her husband’s distant 
cousin, and an O’Kavanagh. Kow Julia looked as 
she was bidden. He was their patent of nobility, the 
broadstone of honour, to Julia, as to her father and 
grandmother. 

Look up at Sir Murty ! ” 

J ulia looked. 

What do you see, child ? ” 

Julia shook her head. 

‘‘You are as like him as if you were his own child. 
Do you never look at yourself in the glass that I have 
to tell it to you ? ” 

Julia murmured something about her sisters re- 
quiring the glass so much that she had never learned 
to need it. A light had come into her eyes and a 
flush to her cheek. In a shamefaced way she stood 
on tip-toe and peered into the dim glass. Yes, the 
likeness was there. The finely arched brows, the dark 
eyes, the broad forehead, the straight, delicate nose, 
the beautifully formed lips. She was a feminine 
replica of Sir Murty. 

She looked from herself in the glass back to the 
old portrait, spotted and stained, with an incredulous 
delight growing in her candid face. 

The likeness was there, although the portrait of 


8 


JULIA 


Sir Murty did nothing to reassure her on the score 
of her ugliness. The artist who had painted him at 
Court had been a disciple of the great Holbein. He 
had given Sir Murty the odd width and flatness, the 
angularity, which we associate with Tudor portraits. 

But what did that matter ? To be like Sir Murty, 
to carry the sign-manual of her honourable ancient 
descent in her face was enough for Julia. 

''Your sisters are Quinlans. They have not a 
drop of O’Kavanagh blood,’’ the grandmother said, 
with her good-natured contempt. "How, are you 
comforted, child ? ” 

" Comforted ! ” repeated Julia, with an immense 
sigh. "More than comforted. Ho one ever told me 
before that I was like Sir Murty.” 

" You are more like him. I’ll be bound, than young 
Sir Murty that is to be. But don’t be vain about it, 
child. If you were it might be a greater snare to you 
than beauty. Do you remember the blessed St. Eose, 
of Lima, that when her hands were admired she 
plunged them into the thorns and tore and scratched 
them with the briars ? ” 

"Ho one is ever likely to admire me,” said Julia, 
simply. 

Her likeness to Sir Murty was her shield, as her 
grandmother had meant it to be, against casual hurt. 
Ho one had ever told her before, but it was quite 


THE UGLY DUCKLING 


9 


true that she might have been sprung straight from 
that hero. The untrained eyes about her had not 
seen it, as they had not seen the beauty of her dark 
slenderness, of her spirited, spiritual, sensitive face, 
of her mournful dark eyes with the golden light in 
them, of her satiny golden skin and hair that matched 
her eyes. NTo one was sensible of the air of race and 
breeding that belonged to her as much as to any of 
the young racehorses bred by Lord Kilmacreddan, the 
great man of the neighbourhood, a little greater even 
than Sir J asper O’Kavanagh, the descendant of Donal 
O’Kavanagh, Murty’s younger son. No one was 
sensible — that is to say, except her grandmother and, 
in a duller way, her father. 

Denis O’Kavanagh favoured his mother in the 
hawk-nosed, high-coloured, smooth-skinned handsome- 
ness which was her share of the O’Kavanagh inherit- 
ance. Like her he was tall and broad-shouldered 
and moved with a certain massive dignity. Neither 
of them were common persons ; but the mother had 
by far the stronger character of the two. 

She was regarded by her son with mingled adoration 
and awe. He never remembered her that she had 
not been splendidly efficient as well as loving. Her 
calm collectedness had been invaluable in case of 
sickness, or accident, or trouble. If he had married 
Eosy Quinlan and honestly believed himself her lover. 


10 


JULIA 


it had been because he despaired of finding his mother’s 
equal among the women of the world. 

While she had inhabited a little house of her own 
during her son’s married life, he had been conscious 
all the time of a vague discomfort that was his need 
of her clear brain and ordered ways. Wlien the 
interlude of Eosy was done, and his mother once more 
took up the direction of his life as though she had 
never dropped it, he on his part accepted the return 
to the old ways with an unacknowledged relief. He 
was an affectionate father, yet there was a part of him 
which had nothing to do with the fine children to 
whom Eosy had faithfully transmitted her features 
and character. There was a world of the soul, which, 
for him, was inhabited only by three persons: his 
mother, himself, and Julia. 

His mother’s ways with Julia sometimes puzzled 
him. She allowed her a great deal of latitude, as, 
indeed, she allowed her other granddaughters. He had 
often told his mother that she did too much in the 
house; to which she had as often responded, that 
when she was gone others might waste and spoil as 
they would, but while she was there she would not 
delegate to others the duties which she performed so 
much better. Ho one should wash up the dinner- 
service of willow-pattern china, with gold bordering, 
but herself ; none darn the fine linen but herself ; none 


THE UGLY DUCKLING 


11 


lay a rough hand on the silver, some of which was 
Jacobean, nor on the pieces of Waterford glass, heavy 
as rock crystal. 

She made her other grandchildren good housewives 
of a rougher sort. 

Only Julia could help her with a fine needle, or 
handle the precious china and silver. She let Julia 
wander whither she would, in fields and on mountains, 
as she let her sisters go merry-making, and made 
occasions of merriment for them at home, with a good- 
natured scorn on her fine mouth as she watched 
them at play. 

But for Julia she made no occasion of merry- 
making; even when she was asked about by the 
neighbours she refused for Julia. Julia never went 
to the town to see the shops as did her sisters, who 
brought home yards of pink ribbon and cheap lace 
and tawdry finery of all descriptions. Julia was 
limited to a choice of two colours for her frocks. She 
might have white or black — no fal-lals, nor furbelows. 
When she chose white muslin for her best frock 
her grandmother clear-starched and ironed it with an 
enjoyment to herself which she did not derive from 
performing a like office for Julia's sisters. 

*‘Does her grandmother mean to make a nun of 
her ? ” asked Bridget Quinlan, the mother of the Joe 
who had taunted Julia with her ugliness long ago. 


12 


JULIA 


“ She’ll spoil the girl. If I were you, Denis O’Kava- 
nagh, I’d be thinking of marrying her.” 

The suggestion passed unheeded over Denis’s head. 
The question, Does her grandmother mean to make 
a nun of her?” recurred to him again and again 
with annoying persistency. 

Could it be that that foolish, blathering woman, 
Bridget Quinlan, had made a random shot and struck 
the truth ? 

But why should the old woman want to make a 
nun of Julia ? Julia was the apple of her secret eye, 
as she was of his own. He would not lose her within 
the prison of a convent. If any of the other girls 
felt that she had a call that way he would say nothing ; 
he would provide her with a fortune just as though 
she were going to an earthly loVer. 

But Julia! The others were good girls, as good 
and pretty as their mother before them, but none of 
them like Julia. He would not give Julia to the 
convent. 

And yet so secure was his mother’s empire over 
him, so entire his confidence in her judgment for him 
and his, that he never asked her the question which 
would have set his doubts at rest and proved to him 
perhaps that his fears were unnecessary. 


CHAPTER II 


THE RETUEN OF THE HEIR 

The tenantry of the O’Kavanaghs of Moyle for some 
years past had transacted all the business of the estate 
with Mr, Craven, the agent, as though Sir Jasper were 
dead. It was quite a long time since Sir Jasper failed, 
so that he made mistakes with his accounts and mis- 
laid sums of money and muddled the affairs of the 
estate ; and things would have gone badly for the heir, 
a schoolboy at Eton, if Mr. Craven had not stepped 
in and got the management of things into his own 
hands. 

They were very just and capable hands, and the 
tenants had no great cause to complain of the agent ; 
yet they missed Sir Jasper when he was pushed to 
one side. In a manner of speaking he was like one 
of themselves. If a man asked for a reduction of 
rent he did not look at him as though he would 
read him through and through, expecting to find a 
rogue under his skin. He always knew if there had 


14 


JULIA 


been sickness in the family, or a bad season with the 
cattle or the crops, and thought nothing of handing 
back a ten-pound note when the rent was paid. But, 
of course, when Mr. Craven got all the affairs of the 
estate into his hands there was no handing back of 
ten-pound notes; there was no extension of time for 
payments. It was “ pay or go.” To be sure, he was 
dealing with another man's money and not his own; 
and he was a just man if a hard one, as even the 
tenants acknowledged. 

His unyieldingness had brought the estate into 
conflict with the Land League for a time, when the 
League was at the height of its power. That time 
of trouble was forgotten now by every one except 
old Sir Jasper, who had been hooted by an excited 
crowd one day in the village, where he had known 
man and boy, maid, woman, and child for sixty years 
and more. 

Sir Jasper's mind was failing even then, but it 
had caught and laid hold upon an impression of love 
turned to hatred, of old friends changed to enemies, 
which puzzled and vexed him sorely in the years that 
followed. To be sure, the hooting had been led by 
boys from another village, and was not intended for 
him personally at all, but for Mr. Craven; Bloody 
Craven," as they were calling him in the heated 
hyperbole of the hour. 


THE EETURN OF THE HEIR 


15 


But it frightened the lonely soul in old Sir Jasper : 
and the people would have been bitterly sorry if they 
had known of the hours and hours he sat, in his half- 
blindness, pondering over the causes of that strange 
and cruel enmity, quaking lest he should meet again 
the black looks in the faces that had been so friendly, 

Mr. Craven had taken, as he considered it, all 
necessary measures for old Sir Jasper’s comfort. To 
be sure, the big house at Moyle was for the greater 
part shut up, the rooms only opened now and again 
for periodical airings and cleanings. 

But Sir Jasper was given a suite of rooms over- 
looking the Dutch garden at the back, rooms that 
received the sun, and looked pleasantly away over 
the ships in full sail, the windmiUs and tufted dogs 
and peacocks of the yew and box and holly and privet 
hedges, to the mountains. He had a body-servant, 
Larry Callaghan, who had been soldier-servant to the 
young Captain, Sir Jasper’s only son, and had brought 
home the Captain’s belongings when he had been 
killed in a little frontier war. Larry was a handy 
fellow, as men like him are apt to be, and was attached 
to Sir Jasper in a fashion ; and Sir Jasper had a liking 
for having him near him because he had been associated 
with his son. 

It had never occurred to Mr. Craven that the old 
man could be lonely. He visited him at intervals 


16 


JULIA 


and gave him a perfunctory statement of the business 
of the estate, and felt that in doing so much he was 
doing the handsome thing, for, as he said to Mrs. 
Craven, it was plainly to be seen that the old man 
didn’t take in much of what he was told. He would 
sit looking out of his nearly blind eyes with a painful 
expression, as though he were searching after the 
understanding which perpetually escaped him. 

“Thank you very much. Craven,” he would say 
at last. “I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you 
for the care of the estate, and I’m sure Mr. Mortimer 
will be also. I trust you to be good to the people 
Craven. The O’Kavanaghs have always been good 
to their people.” 

Then Mr. Craven would reassure him, telling him 
that the estate was the most contented and improving 
in the county; and that was true enough, for Mr. 
Craven had a short way with ne’er-do-weels and 
wastrels which would have troubled Sir Jasper if he 
had known. 

But as he did not know, and would relapse into 
a more clouded and dreamy state than ever after 
those efforts to follow Mr. Craven in his statement, 
he did not suffer on that account. 

The heir, who was Sir Jasper’s grand-nephew 
never came near the place. He had had an English 
mother, and had been reared in England, and all the 


THE RETURN OE THE HEIR 


17 


influence of his life had been English, from his 
childhood, spent in an English home, to his schooldays 
at Eton and his young manhood at Christ Church, 
Oxford. It was two or three years now since he 
had left Oxford, and during that time he had been 
tied to his mother’s sofa in that villa in the Apennines 
where she had vainly sought for health. His mother 
had been dead now a year or more and he was 
travelling with friends in the East. 

“Ho hurry there, Mary, to make himself acquainted 
with the Irish estates,” Mr. Craven said to his wife, 
after reading a letter from the heir. 

“He’ll be an absentee landlord, Alexander,” Mrs. 
Craven responded, “and you’ll have all the work of 
the estate. I hope the young man will be sensible 
of what you’ve done for him.” 

“ It would be a thousand pities if he were to meddle 
after I’ve got the estate in such order,” Mr. Craven 
responded. “ A pretty muddle he’d make of it if he 
began interfering. I don’t think I could stand it 
after all those years. You wouldn’t believe it, but I 
had some difficulty with the old man yesterday over 
the rights of turbary. He said the people always 
had them. I’d been telling him too much, trusting 
to his not understanding. I had to teU him, to satisfy 
him, that I had to act for the heir. It’s not the 
first time. For a moment I thought he was going 


c 


18 


JULIA 


to have a fit of anger. Then he turned away, and I 
saw the tears in his eyes. I’ve been obliged to make 
an authority of the heir, or he would never be 
satisfied.’* 

“ Poor old man ! ** said Mrs. Craven, softly. “ But, 
indeed, Alexander, they ought to be grateful to you. 
Aren’t they prosperous where so many are ruined ? 
And the people respect you, if they hated you once 
upon a time and threatened your life.” 

She turned pale at the memory. 

“They’d have attempted it, too,” said the agent, 
“if I’d made a show of myself, driving through the 
country with a car-load of police after me. But I 
went in and out among them. I gave them all the 
chances to shoot at me. I was never afraid. It’s 
the policy of shilly-shally ruins them. There isn’t 
an agent in the country better liked. Why should 
I give them the right of turbary when they can pay 
for it? They’re not poor squatters but prosperous 
farmers. I’d like to know what the estate would 
have been now if I hadn’t got complete control 
before the storm broke ! ” 

At this time Sir Jasper was nearly eighty years 
of age. He wandered about perpetually with Larry 
Callaghan beside him, an old velvet hunting-cap 
pulled down over his soft, white hair, a very old 
hound — the last of the pack — at his heels. The village 


THE RETURN OP THE HEIR 


19 


cliildren called him Old Hunting Cap.’* They had 
never known him when he was Sir Jasper O’Kavanagh, 
and a great man. Indeed, he had been so long pushed 
on one side that some of their young parents did no 
more than remember it. 

He gave very little trouble to his attendant. There 
was a certain tree in the grounds, on a knoll which 
overlooked the house and the woods. Sir Jasper’s 
proud father had planted it on the day on which his 
son was born. It had always been his tree. He 
could remember quite well his gentle young mother 
leading him, a white-pinafored child, to see how his 
tree grew. His memories were of things far back, as 
are the memories of the old. He saw himself planting 
a tree by his own the day Hugh was born. He 
remembered Hugh’s young mother coming to see how 
the tree throve, and how glad they had been when it 
shot up and put forth leaves, for it was a superstition 
of the people that the child throve or dwindled with 
the tree. 

He only asked to be taken there in his bathchair 
and left with his tree and his memories. Larry 
Callaghan at this time was courting, and sure it did 
no harm to any one, and what could happen to Old 
Hunting Cap — the children’s name for him had grown 
to be the common one — if Larry slipped away for a 
talk with Kitty ? 


20 


JULIA 


The talk extended itself indefinitely. Kitty's 
mother had a public-house in the village, and Larry was 
a travelled man and an esteemed story-teller. A seat 
by the public-house fire, with a tumbler of steaming 
punch in his hand, a crowd of delighted faces about 
him, and pretty Kitty herself coming now and again 
to lean over the back of his chair and applaud the 
story-teller. These things were better than to sit 
out in the autumnal mists with Sir Jasper, in a dead 
silence that heard the fall of an acorn on the ground, 
the scurry of a rabbit to its burrow, the drops falling 
from the soddened branches. Sure the old man was 
safe and sound, let alone that old Teaser had yet 
a fang or two, and would rend any one that molested 
her master. 

Hour after hour the old man would sit there 
unconscious of the passage of time, the hound’s head 
on his knee, his knotted, purple old hands absently 
fondling the creature’s silky ears. If he was damp 
and chilled to the bone he was little conscious of it. 
He was happier than Larry knew, for those were the 
hours when he had his gentle ghosts all about him. 

The tree spread its protecting arms above him as 
though to shield him from the mist. The tree was 
in the first splendour of youth, although he was worn 
out. Hugh’s tree, that should have kept it company, 
was down, struck by lightning the summer Hugh was 


THE RETURN OF THE HEIR 21 

killed. But round and round the tree there circled, 
like the fairies the country people imagined there of 
summer nights, the ghosts of his happiness and his 
youth. His mother and his father were there and 
his young bride ; Hugh was there, a child, a boy, a 
youth, beautiful and brave and generous, with no 
shadow of his early death upon him. Hither came all 
the old friends, the kindly, devoted retainers who 
seemed to have passed away with the happy years. 

He had missed them dreadfully. He had stayed 
too long after them, in a world where people frowned 
on him and were angry. He had left it in his will 
that the tree was to be cut down to make his coffin. 
It was his tree ; it had come with him ; it should go 
with him. It would be as weU if he were gone. 

Of late years the world had been very unfriendly. 
People never came to see him now. Craven flouted 
his will. The servants yielded him no obedience. 
CaUaghan neglected him, yes, neglected him, and often 
scolded him. The heir only waited for him to go. 
The heir whom he had never seen wore, no doubt, a 
hard and just face like Craven’s, and would have 
a contempt for his ways with the people and would 
not understand them, and there would be more trouble 
in a world that was already full of unfriendly faces. 
How different it would have been if Hugh, his boy, 
had only lived ! 


22 


JULIA 


One autumn day the chill of the mist had pene- 
trated his outer garments, and he was shivering. It 
was the sense of physical discomfort that had driven 
away his gentle ghosts and set him to thinking, on 
the frets and vexations of his later years. Where was 
Callaghan ? Why had he left him so long ? Difficult 
tears sprang in the old man's eyes and travelled slowly 
down his cheeks. 

The old dog growled and bristled under his hand. 
He peered through the fog, the wet fog that was 
streaming in rain from all the branches. 

Is it you, Callaghan ? " he asked feebly. “ Take 
me home. I am famished. You have been neglecting 
me, you rascal.” 

It was not Callaghan. It was a stranger, looming 
tall through the fog, straight, slender; the figure was 
like Hugh’s, but Hugh was dead those thirty years 
back. 

"‘They told me I should find you here,” the 
stranger said, with an appeasing hand on the old 
hound’s head. Teaser had sprung to her feet, trembling 
with a yelp of delight. “But where is your man? 
Great heavens ! and you are wet tlirough ! How dare 
they neglect you like this! Come, I must get you 
home.” 

He had put a young, strong arm about Sir 
Jasper’s shoulders. The old man felt the contact 


THE EETURN OF THE HEIR 


23 


inexpressibly comforting. Even the sharp anger in 
the voice delighted him, since it was not for him, 
but for those who neglected him. 

‘‘I ought to have come before/* the stranger went 
on, ‘^but they told me you were weU cared for. 
Some one shall suffer for this.** 

“ You are ** 

Sir Jasper raised his dim eyes to the stranger’s 
face. 

“ Your grand-nephew, Mortimer O’Kavanagh. You 
will never be alone any more. Come, sir, I must 
get you home to the warmth of the fire. I have 
come to take care of you.’* 

The heir was usuaUy a soft-spoken, quiet-mannered 
young man, but his anger on that occasion was as 
though a volcano had been suddenly let loose. Even 
Mr. Craven feU in for a share of it, although it was 
well known that the Cravens held their heads as 
high as the O’Kavanaghs, and that Mrs. Craven was 
the Honourable Mrs. Craven, and cousin to an earl. 

“I liked him for it, Mary,** Mr. Craven said, 
reporting the scene to his wife, ‘"even though I felt 
inclined at the moment to ask him to appoint another 
agent. I have been so busy getting the estate in 
order for him that I did not perhaps look after the 
old man as well as I might. I trusted him too 
much to that scoundrel Callaghan.** 


24 


JULIA 


As the days passed it became evident to all, from 
Mr. Craven to the smallest tenant, that the heir 
had come home, and that he was not going to be a 
non-ruling heir. 

It was most blissfully evident of all to Sir Jasper 
in his fire-lit, swept and garnished room, where he 
lay, drawing hard breaths like a broken-winded horse, 
in the heavy cold that had come of his drenching in 
the mist. 

Larry waited on him as usual — he could not have 
borne to be separated from Larry — but was a repentant, 
soft-spoken Larry, much in awe of the heir. The old 
hound lay on the hearthrug by the fire, listening for 
the coming of the heir’s foot. Sir Jasper, despite the 
pain of drawing breath, was in a little paradise. The 
heir’s hand on his as he sat by the bedside ; the heir’s 
arm about his neck as he was lifted to take his 
medicine: sometimes it was the heir and sometimes 
Hugh. But the old man’s world was no longer 
peopled by ghosts. The last of his kin had come 
home. 


CHAPTER III 

THE MEETING m THE ABBEY 

The Abbey of Moyle is one of the most beautiful 
ruins in the south of Ireland. The side-walls still 
stand, and the beautiful gables, with their pointed 
Gothic windows. The sedilia, the stalls of the monks 
under their floriated arches, are in excellent preserva- 
tion; and outside the Abbey a bit of an old cloister 
yet remains. 

It stands quite lonely in the middle of flelds. 
There is no crowded graveyard about it; none but 
O’Kavanaghs must sleep there, and only a few slabs 
in the Abbey itself bear the names of the O’Kavanaghs. 
The great Sir Murty lies buried there, carried by 
stealth, to be laid with his fathers, from that hut 
in the mountains where he was murdered by a traitor. 
He lies under an uninscribed slab, and about him lie 
other O’Kavanaghs, knights and ladies. About the 
middle of the Abbey is the effigy of Turlough 
O’Kavanagh, who went to the Holy Land, and has 


26 JULIA 

tlie crossed feet of the Crusader, with his lady, coifed 
and veiled, beside him. 

The place is not by any manner of means for- 
bidding, as so many ancient Irish abbeys are, because 
of the irreverently ill-kept, crowded graveyards about 
their walls. Here you step straight into the Abbey 
from the fields, with the grazing cattle outside. It 
lies on Denis O’Kavanagh’s land, and out of the 
honour he bore his name, and the memories of 
O’Kavanagh saints and heroes, he had fenced it from 
the cattle and put a wicket-gate through which they 
could not enter. 

His daughter Julia had done more, for she had 
planted and sown flowers within the Abbey itself — 
pansies for thoughts, rosemary for remembrance. Time 
had been when the pigs had rooted and the cattle 
and sheep browsed within the Abbey, but those days 
were over. A monthly rose tree, which bore a blossom 
every month of the mild year, grew at Sir Murty's 
head. The place was sweet with the fragrance of wet 
autumn violets, a berberis tree made an orange flush 
in the pale afternoon. 

Julia had taken the Abbey under her special 
protection, and was not afraid to be there in the 
autumn dusk. She had been mushrooming, and had 
turned aside into the Abbey; it was a place for 
thinking, where she was pretty sure not to be 


THE MEETING IN THE ABBEY 27 

disturbed. She had taken a seat on Sir Murty’s slab, 
and, with the basket of mushrooms at her feet, she 
sat with her knees crouched up and her chin on her 
hands, her golden eyes, stormy and troubled, looking 
straight before her. 

She had matter for thought. AU the afternoon, 
going up and down the wide, yellow, lonely fields, 
where now the little wisps of mist were blown softer 
than thistledown, she had been so disturbed that it 
was only mechanically she had gone after the gleaming, 
ivory-smooth, ivory-white disks in the grass, which 
she usually discovered with the mushroom-gatherer's 
keen excitement. Her basket had somehow filled 
itself, but Julia's heart had not been in the task. 

She was wearing a plain, straight, black dress, 
almost like a nun’s robe, and she had a little scarlet 
silk shawl — a present from her grandmother’s stock 
of ancient things — about her gipsy head and knotted 
under her chin. The effect was bizarre, brilliant, but 
Julia, who shunned the glass, had no idea of it. 

However, it had struck some one else. Halfway 
down the boreen from the house she had met her 
distant cousin, Joe Quinlan, the same who had uttered 
the blasphemy about Julia's looks in his rough boy- 
hood. He was now a tall, loosely built young man, 
high-coloured, with a large, red moustache, a taste 
for bright ties and wide- checked tweed suits, and a 


28 


JULIA 


very fair opinion of himself. It is only right to say 
that the latter had been fostered by the girls of the 
neighbourhood. Joe was credited with a sparkling 
wit ; he was a showy orator at the County Council and 
Poor Law Boards ; people prophesied of him that 
he would one day be raised to the Commission of the 
Peace. He was the only son of his mother, and he had 
a good farm, and a comfortable, thatched farmhouse. 

Joe, of late, to Julia’s consternation, had begun 
to seek her in her secluded corners and to single her 
out for the honour of his conversation. 

Her sisters looked on with nods and becks and 
wreathed smiles, of which Julia was painfully con- 
scious. Sweethearts had always been a tender subject 
with Julia, and the least raillery about it was sufficient 
to provoke a flood of tears. Hot that Julia was 
troubled with such matters — unlike her sisters, who 
had had their swains ever since they were in short 
frocks. 

This new attitude of Joe Quinlan’s had made Julia 
very uncomfortable but still unsuspecting. 

However, this afternoon she had met the young 
man face to face in the boreen. 

'‘Father at home, Julia ? ” he had asked. 

"Yes, he is at home,” Julia had answered, trying 
to glide past him ; but he had prevented her by seizing 
her basket. 


THE MEETING IN THE ABBEY 29 

“May I come with you, my pretty maid?'' he 
sang, with easy assurance. 

“ Oh no, please don't," cried Julia, now thoroughly 
alarmed. 

“ You don’t mean it ; you know you don't ! " said 
Joe, with an infatuated, fatuous expression. At the 
same time he slid an arm about Julia's slender waist. 
“Come, give me a kiss, JuHa,” he said, pressing her 
face close to his. 

Julia freed herself, springing wildly away from 
him. 

“ How dare you, Joe Quinlan, how dare you ! ” she 
cried, panting. 

“You are prettier than ever now, Ju," he said, 
with the air of a connoisseur. “ And don’t be pretend- 
ing to be so angry. There are plenty of girls would 
be very glad to give me a kiss. Sure I know the 
ways girls have of leading a man on." 

Julia looked at him with a horror that greatly 
amused him. After aU, it was the thing about Julia 
that she never made eyes at a fellow. He laughed 
aloud as she fled, and the sound of his laughter went 
with her. 

But he did not follow her; that was the great 
thing. When she was quite out of sight of him, and 
had got into the fields, she had stood for a minute 
or two with her hands over her face, the tears oozing 


30 


JULIA 


through her fingers. She was filled with a virginal 
horror and repulsion for Joe Quinlan and his caresses. 
She felt outraged, sick, ashamed, miserable. She did 
not know how she was going to face the world again. 
Her dog, an old Irish terrier, named Eody, who had 
been bristling and growling ominously during her 
encounter with her cousin, sat watching her wistfully. 
When at last she picked up her discarded basket and 
went on her way, he sprang and leaped about her, 
barking loudly from the excess of his relief. 

She had filled her basket slowly; her heart was 
not in her work. A round, thin moon hung above 
the mountains, and she had not noticed it; but its 
light became more noticeable as the daylight faded. 
The yellow field was full of the chirping of grass- 
hoppers. She passed by the fairy rath which had a 
hundred legends attaching to it. Her sisters would 
hardly have gone there in broad daylight alone; but 
Julia had none of those terrors. 

The mists were like little clouds about her feet. 
It was time to go home; but something withheld 
Julia — the fear that she might find Joe Quinlan still 
at the Keep. 

As she passed by the Abbey, its gables exquisite 
against the yellow sky, she leant an instant on the 
gate, then went in and sat down on Sir Murty’s tomb- 
stone. The neighbourhood of the dead was friendly. 


THE MEETING IN THE ABBEY 


31 


She could not imagine herself being afraid of the 
O’Kavanagh dead. Joe Quinlan, living, was another 
matter. 

She was thinking over that abhorrent passage 
with him. Of course, he had meant to mock her. He 
couldn't be such an omadhawn as to have thought 
her pretty. On the whole, it was a relief to think of 
it in that way. There was something in her soul 
that clownish rudeness and insult could not touch. 
Julia’s horror died away. What did it matter that 
Joe Quinlan should mock at her ? That was not the 
intolerable thing. 

Calm and peace came to her by degrees in that 
ruined fane of the old religion, erected to the honour 
of God and St. Ita by O’Kavanaghs long ago. She 
had a fanciful idea that Sir Turlough over there might 
spring to his mailed feet if wrong and insult were to 
threaten her. She had been there half an hour — 
three-quarters. The moon that had been as trans- 
parent as thin lawn in the sky while the sun was 
above the horizon had become a great lamp, turning 
all the fields to silver. She flung a shadow of the 
west window on the grass, and on Julia’s bent head. 
Where she shone there was silver ; the shadows were 
dark as black velvet. Suddenly Eody growled, and 
there was the click of the gate outside. 

She sprang to her feet with a sudden fear. Was 


32 


JULIA 


it possible that Joe Quinlan had followed her and 
found her place of refuge ? What would she do 
if he were to be rude to her again in this lonely 
place ? 

It was not Joe Quinlan. It was a young, tall, 
slight person, who removed his hat as he came across 
the threshold of the Abbey, and stood for an instant 
without seeing Julia. There was something about his 
build, his attitude, his clothes and the way he wore 
them, very unlike the men Julia was accustomed to 
see. She knew him at once for a gentleman. 

She stirred and the moonlight fell upon her face. 
She had been holding Eody close to her to keep him 
quiet. The young man uttered an exclamation of 
surprise, and came forward. 

'' Who are you ? ” he asked. ** Why, this is an 
odd place to find any one. Are you an O^Kavanagh 
lady revisiting the glimpses of the moon ? ” 

“ I am Julia O’Kavanagh,'^ said the girl, simply. 

“You mean Lady Julia,’* he said, peering at her 
with the same whimsical air. 

Julia’s head dropped still more. When she had 
lifted her eyes to his they had been full of the moon- 
light. The little shawl had slipped back, and the 
light lay on her hair, sleek as a mirror, yet rippled 
like water. 

“ You mean Lady J ulia,” he said, “ the dame of 


THE MEETING IN THE ABBEY 33 

Sir Jocelyn. I never thought to find your ladyship’s 
ghost here. Do you often walk ? ” 

Julia was recovering her first shyness. think 
ITl be going, sir,” she said sedately. “ I was picking 
mushrooms in the field without, and came in here, and 
I was thinking, and did not notice how the time 
went.” 

She stooped and picked up her basket of mush- 
rooms, a heavy basket, but she lifted it with easy 
grace, and made as though to pass him. 

“ Allow me to carry it a little way for you,” he 
said, taking it with gentle force. “ Why, it is quite 
heavy ; no wonder you were tired and needed rest. 
You are not afraid of the Abbey and its ghosts ? ” 

“ I am often here,” said Julia. “ If there were 
ghosts they wouldn’t hurt me. I am of their own 
blood ? ” 

He inclined his head to her as though her voice 
was pleasant in his ears, as indeed it was. The soft, 
slow, delicate hesitancy of it delighted him. He had 
often heard of the brogue, but had had no idea it 
made such music. How sweet her voice was; and 
her accent was quite pure, her words well chosen. 

‘‘For the matter of that, so am I,” he said. “I 
think we must be cousins. Miss O’Kavanagh. Or is 
it that this is an O’Kavanagh country, and the name 
sown up and down the length and breadth of it ? ” 


D 


34 


JULIA 


“ Oh, not at all,'' said Julia, in a shocked way. 

There are only ourselves and the big family, the 
O’Kavanaghs of Moyle. We don’t call the O’Kava- 
naghs of Moyle cousins. Of course, we are of the 
same blood. They are our landlords. I think you 
must be " 

“ I am Mortimer O’Kavanagh — Murty to my 
friends and intimates." 

They were out in the fields now in the full moon- 
light and he could see the delicacy of her profile as 
she walked by his side. She glided delicately like 
the spirit of Night. He looked with wondering admira- 
tion at the massive satin coils of her hair. But her 
face was in shadow. There were many things he 
wanted to know about her face. He wanted to see 
it in daylight or with full lamplight upon it. 

am glad you have come home, sir," she said. 
“ Every one is glad. Poor old Sir Jasper " 

“I ought to have come sooner; but I have not 
very long been free to come. Sir Jasper is very 
happy. And you are " 

“I am the daughter of Denis O'Kavanagh of the 
Keep, one of Sir Jasper’s tenants.” 

Ah, the Abbey is on his land, and he has railed 
it in, Mr. Craven tells me. It should not have been 
left to him to do. We should have done it.” 

‘^He thought he had the right.” Where was 


THE MEETING IN THE ABBEY 


35 


JuHa’s shyness ? It seemed easy to talk to the heir, 
to answer his questions, to put forward statements of 
her own. “ You see, we come from Sir Murty, who 
was killed above there in the mountains the time of 
the Desmond Eebellion. He was the great friend of 
Sir James Fitzmaurice. They say Queen Elizabeth 
would have married him if he had but asked her. He 
could say tilings to her face no one else could, and 
she would answer him with a stroke of her fan, 
laughing at his impudence.” 

“ I know. You are the elder branch of the family. 
We are the younger. I envy you your ancestor, Miss 
O’Kavanagh.” 

“ Oh ! ” said JuHa, in a contrite voice ; “ but all that 
is long ago. NTo one remembers the old stories; at 
least, very few do. My grandmother thinks a deal of 
them, and I have heard them over and over from her 
but other people forget them. It is a long time that 
Donal O’Kavanagh’s descendants have been the 
Quality, and Sir Koderick's farming the land. People 
forget that there was ever a time when Sir Eoderick 
was the chief of the clan.” 

''Hot in this country of long memories, my dear 
cousin,” said the heir, lightly. 

"You must not call me that,” said Julia, in a 
frightened voice. " Sir Jasper never called us cousins, 
although he had a great respect for my father. He 


36 


JULIA 


would never have dreamt of calling us cousins, nor 
would we have dreamt of it from him.” 

'' Seeing how Donal O’Kavanagh treated his brother, 
I am not surprised that you have no feeling of kin- 
ship.” 

I didn’t mean that, indeed, sir. We have been a 
long time living at the Keep, and I have heard my 
father say that the O’Kavanaghs of Moyle have always 
been good to us and to all their people. We can hold 
our heads high without — without belittling others.” 

Meaning the younger branch of the family. I 
may come and see your father ? ” 

^'He will take it as an honour.” 

They had come out in the boreen now, and had 
paused by the field gate. 

“I take this way, Mr. O’Kavanagh,” said Julia, 
with hand extended for her basket. “ Thank you very 
much for carrying the mushrooms for me.” 

He looked ahead to where, against a background of 
trees, a light flamed out in the darkness. 

‘‘ That is the Keep, I suppose ? ” he said, pointing 
to it. 

‘‘ Yes ; it is only a little way now. Thank you very 
much for carrying my basket, sir.” 

The '"sir” jarred on him. It did not seem right 
from this delicate and dainty creature. 

Don t call me * sir,’ ” he said, almost sharply. 


THE MEETING IN THE ABBEY 37 

After aU, we are cousins, though your pride will not 
let you acknowledge it.” 

My pride ! ” her voice was full of a hurt amazement. 

The light looks home-like,” he said, putting a hand 
over his eyes to look at it. “ Won’t you take me home 
with you now and introduce me to your father ? ” 

“ If you wish, Mr. O’Kavanagh.” 

She knew what she should find — the family seated, 
as they usually were of evenings, round the great fire 
in the kitchen. Her sisters would reproach her for 
bringing the heir in unannounced. Her father and her 
grandmother would not mind. She herself, in her own 
mind, thought the kitchen a much pleasanter place 
than the best parlour. In the best parlour, looking at 
the heir across the sherry and currant cake, which were 
brought out for visitors, across the wheel-shaped 
arrangement of cheap and foolish French books, which 
were the Misses O’Kavanagh’s Convent school prizes, 
she would have been shy enough. It had been different 
in the Abbey, among the moonlit fields, with the first 
touch of frost making the grass brittle. She had the 
kinship, although she had disowned it. Nor was she 
ashamed of the big kitchen and the family as it lived 
every day. 

“ My father will be very pleased to welcome you, 
Mr. O’Kavanagh,” she said, walking with him towards 
the light. 


CHAPTER IV 


LANDLORD AND TENANT 

The interior of the big kitchen was full of light and 
shade like a Kembrandt picture. There was a great 
glowing fire of driftwood and peat, which smelt plea- 
santly. A huge lamp hung from the rafters, above a 
snowy table gleaming with shining particles of the 
freestone with which it had been scrubbed. The floor 
was of tiles newly ochred. The walls were of a 
uniform brown colour from the smoke, and a great 
stretch of one was taken up by an enormous dresser, 
on which was the common crockery, together with 
some old lustre jugs and a row of pewter plates. An 
ancient eight-day clock ticked from the corner. On a 
shelf above the mantelpiece was a row of brightly 
polished brass candlesticks. A huge copper preserving- 
pan, and a couple of rows of dish-covers, winked in the 
little leaping flames of the driftwood. In the recesses 
of the big chimney some flitches of bacon, hanging in 
the smoke, were discernible when you grew accustomed 
to the half-light. 


LANDLOKD AND TENANT 


39 


Mortimer O’Kavanagh, however, only got a very 
general idea of these things. The human elements in 
the place attracted his interest more strongly. That 
splendid old woman, with the richly coloured, handsome 
face, the hawk nose, and grey eyes that needed no spec- 
tacles, framed in the white-frilled cap ; she must be the 
grandmother. Her relationship to the man sitting the 
other side of the hearth, holding a newspaper to 
the light, was evident enough. There were several 
other people in the kitchen. Four or five girls, sitting 
at the table, had looked towards him and Julia as they 
came in — fair, buxom girls with fluiBfed-out golden hair. 
There were a couple of young men also, but them he 
hardly noticed. 

Once in the lighted kitchen Julia’s old shyness 
seemed to have fallen upon her. She went up to her 
grandmother and whispered to her who the visitor was, 
and then stood withdrawn into the shadow, as though 
uncertain whether to stay or go. 

You are very welcome, Mr. O’Kavanagh,” the old 
woman said, rising in a majestic way and holding out 
her hand. ‘'Denis, this is Mr. Mortimer. Won’t you 
take a chair, sir.? These are my granddaughters” — 
she indicated with a wave of her hand the fair-haired 
damsels — “and our neighbours, Frank Dwyer and 
Andrew Gleeson.” 

O’Kavanagh bowed, and took the chair offered to 


40 


JULIA 


him. The girls at the table, busy with frills and 
furbelows, making bonnets and blouses and what not, 
looked at him from under their long lashes. The young 
men pushed back their chairs with a little clatter. 

‘^IVe intended to come to see you,” the heir said, 
shaking Denis by the hand. “ But, as you can under- 
stand, I’ve been busy. There's so much to learn. 
Then I came by accident on your daughter in the 
Abbey and asked her to take me home with her. I 
had no idea there were other O’Kavanaghs. Mr. 
Craven had not told me. We are, in a manner of 
speaking, kin.” 

There was a little flutter among the girls. Bella 
dropped a pink rose which she was fastening 
coquettishly into a blue tulle bonnet, and flashed a 
triumphant glance at Frank Dwyer, in the background. 
Before the entrance of Mr. Mortimer, the young man 
had sat close to her admiring the bonnet, which was 
intended for his complete subjugation. The Misses 
O’Kavanagh, always excepting Julia, were wilful 
young women, and would not have their matches made 
for them if they could help it. The grandmother 
stipulated for one thing. She would have no hole- 
and-corner wooing, no love-making out-of-doors and 
in dark corners. Some drop of peasant blood in her 
made her distrustful of love, at least, as it manifested 
itself in the people about her. 


LANDLOED AND TENANT 


41 


Presently the young men got up, and with 
whispered farewells to their charmers, and an awkward 
nod towards the elders and Mrs. O’Kavanagh, they 
went out. 

At a signal from the grandmother the girls dis- 
appeared within a swing door which led to the parlour. 
There was a clatter of tea things. 

“You’ll drink a cup of tea with us, sir,” the 
grandmother said. 

“ Thank you very much. I should like to,” answered 
the young man, looking round casually to see if he 
could discover Julia. Yes, there she was, coming in 
through a door in the corner, which he conjectured led 
to the dairy, with a candle in one hand and a jug 
of cream in the other. 

She went through the swing door to the parlour, 
and before it could close he heard a high young voice 
with a more rustic tongue than Julia’s. 

“What did you mean, Julia O’Kavanagh, you 
great omadhawn, by bringing Mr. Murty in on us in 
the kitchen ? ” 

He heard Julia’s voice low in self-defence. Then 
the door closed. 

There were a couple of dogs lying on the hearth. 
One of them was Julia’s Eody, who lay and blinked 
at him with a friendly expression. The other, a great 
orange and white collie, yelped in his dreams. 


42 


JULIA 


‘‘You’ll be a smoker, sir ? ” said Denis O’Kavanagh. 
“ If you have a pipe with you, I can give you a fill.” 

“ I may smoke ? ” asked the heir, in a deprecating 
way, looking at Mrs. O’Kavanagh. He was leaning 
back in the comfortable chair of sugawns, i.e. twisted 
straw ropes, as though he had sat there many times. 

“Sure himself is a terrible smoker,” said the old 
woman; “’twould be a pity if we didn’t get used 
to it.” 

How handsome her grey eyes were! What a 
profile, cut with the perfection of a cameo ! The old 
lips closed in a firm yet sweet line. Her expression 
was benignant for the young landlord, as he lit a 
grubby little pipe, beloved from his college days, and 
blew a couple of rings in the air, watching contentedly 
while they soared and broke. 

“And are you settled down at Moyle altogether, 
Mr. Murty ? ” she asked. “ You’ll excuse me calling 
you Mr. Murty. ’Tis the way the name goes in our 
family. You’ll have heard of Sir Murty ? ” 

“ Your ancestor and mine ? Yes. I’m only sorry 
Sir Koderick wasn’t mine, too. I am always Murty 
by my friends.” 

“See that now!” said Denis, quietly admiring. 
Denis O’Kavanagh was a taciturn person and willing 
to leave much of the conversation to his mother. 

Across the rings of smoke young O’Kavanagh was 


LANDLOKD AND TENANT 


43 


watching Julia's slender figure as it moved hither and 
thither in the dimness of the room beyond the lamp 
and firelight. 

Presently she' came to the fire, and kneeling down 
before it, proceeded to make toast. Another sister 
had set a saucepan on the embers, from which a most 
appetizing odour came to O’Kavanagh’s nostrils. He 
was thinking that it was a thousand pities J ulia should 
have her satin cheeks burned by the fire, and was 
staring in a fascinated way at the exquisite profile. 

“ Allow me," he said presently, taking the toasting- 
fork from her hand and relinquishing his pipe. You 
don’t know what a good hand I am at making toast." 
He flashed a boyish and ingenuous smile at Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh. “ At Christ Church I have made piles of 
it in my time. You don’t know what a good cook one 
learns to be in college. It is the things one makes 
for one’s self, the tea and toast, the "VYelsh rarebit, 
the scrambled eggs that one enjoys. NTothing one had 
in Hall was half so good." 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh held her knitting suspended for 
a moment, and gazed at him with bright, benevolent 
eyes. She was as interested in his world, in a manner 
of speaking, as he was in hers. 

'‘And do you tell me all you young gentlemen 
were shut up there in college with not a womankind 
to do anything for you ? " she asked, keenly inquisitive. 


44 


JULIA 


“There were the bed-makers, you know. They 
were very snuffy old ladies. The one I had wore 
a black shawl and bonnet even when she was making 
my bed. I often wondered how she did it.” 

“ Dear me ; I’d have thought you’d have everything 
done in the finest of style.” 

A thin spire of smoke came from the toast. 

“ You’re letting it burn,” said Mrs. O’Kavanagh. 

“Why, so I am,” said the heir. “I shall have 
to scrape off the burn. But see how nicely this side 
is done. I think it is so kind of you to welcome me 
like this, you know. Why, I might have been running 
in and out here all my life.” 

“So you might,” assented Denis O’Kavanagh, “if 
Mr. Shamus hadn’t married an English lady and your- 
self been born in England.” 

“ Ah, I’m afraid I can’t undo that. But every one 
may be pardoned one mistake.” 

The two listeners laughed at the small joke as 
though it were a very delightful one. 

There was a move presently to the parlour for tea. 
That usually forbidding apartment was looking its 
best under the influence of fire and lamplight, even 
though the fire’s brightness was the whited sepulchre 
of a newly lit fire which has not yet begun to give out 
heat. The room was spotlessly clean, the table-linen 
and silver old and fine, the china beautiful. 


LANDLOKD AND TENANT 


45 


It was a high tea. There was a cold ham on the 
table and boiled eggs, as well as a most appetizing 
ragout of the mushrooms, sweet home-made bread, 
butter which had the fragrance of May pastures, 
delicious tea with fresh cream in it. There was fruit 
on the table also, and a decanter near O’Kavanagh's 
place. 

“ You wouldn’t be liking a glass of grog better than 
the tea, sir ? ” said Denis O’Kavanagh, cutting pink-and- 
white slices of ham. 

“ I adore tea,” said the heir. 

Julia’s sisters looked at each other. It was a 
convention among their swains that tea was only fit 
for women. Their occasional reading of a society paper 
had not prepared them for fashionable young men who 
adored tea. 

The heir enjoyed himself immensely. He had been 
walking a good many miles over the land that should 
one day be his before he had met with Julia. How 
they made him at home! Nothing could be better 
bred than the ease with which they had taken him 
into their family circle. Even Julia’s sisters, glancing 
shyly at him from under their blue eyes, betrayed no 
awkwardness at his sudden intrusion in their midst. 

Old Mrs. O’Kavanagh presided over the tea-pot 
Julia sat beside her, withdrawn a little, as though she 
would shelter under her wing. He had an intuition 


46 


JULIA 


that his glances made Julia uncomfortable; therefore 
he did not look her way, at least not ostensibly. 

He wanted to know about the things that were 
happening in the country. Mrs. O’Kavanagh was 
ready to give him any amount of information. She 
read the newspapers, although she did not care to see 
her grandchildren reading them, lest they should come 
upon divorce cases and such things, unfit for their 
knowledge. Unlike far less strong-minded guardians, 
she let them read the fashion papers, or those that dealt 
with the doings of great folks, or foolish, harmless love 
stories, holding that it was natural for girls to like 
such things as it was for children to like sugar. 

“You must remember I know nothing,” said the 
heir. “ At Oxford we sometimes had an Irish debate 
at the Union ; and I always took the Irish side. But 
I was conscious of my ignorance. The knowledge 
gathered from books is nothing. You must be on the 
spot.” 

“For the doings of the last fifty years you could 
go to none better than my mother,” said Denis O’Kava- 
nagh, with naive pride. “ I hope she won’t scandalize 
you, sir. She’s a terrible Fenian, and she has made 
Julia as bad as herself.” 

“ Oh ! ” The heir was interested. 

“They tell me nowadays that I am a bad Irish- 
woman,” said the old woman, with a shrug. 


LANDLOKD AND TENANT 


47 


“She's a terrible Conservative these times,” went 
on the son. “She won’t look at the United Irish 
League.” 

“ Isn’t it always the way ? ” asked the old woman, 
with her fine smile. “ The patriots of yesterday are 
the Conservatives of to-day. And sure, after all, what 
does it matter if we’re good Irish ? I’m for being 
Irish, and I don’t dispute with them that see things 
differently from me, as long as they stand up for 
Ireland too. I often say ’tis the outside cars has taught 
them never to see but their own side of a question.” 

“ I hope you’ll instruct me,” said O’Kavanagh, with 
the modest eagerness that became him. “ There is so 
much I want to know.” 

“ Indeed, then, if I can instruct Mr. Murty O’Kava- 
nagh just home from Oxford ! ” said the old woman, 
whimsically ; and then added, “ Morebetoken, we were 
talking of Sir Murty. There’s his picture up there ! 
Julia, child, step on the chair and hand it down.” 

Julia did as she was told before O’Kavanagh could 
intercept her, and the picture was handed to him for 
his inspection. He hung above it with an air of 
excitement. 

“You are like him, Mrs. O’Kavanagh,” he said. 
“And so is your son. But Miss Julia is most of all 
like him.” 

“You’ve seen it,” said the old woman. “People 


48 JULIA 

who’ve been looking at it all their lives have never 
come on that likeness.’* 

“ She might be his daughter.” 

Poor Julia retired more into the background than 
ever on being discussed. Was Mr. Mortimer thinking 
her so dreadfully ugly, so unfortunately unlike her 
comely sisters ? Ah, well ! If one had to be ugly it 
was a comfort to be like Sir Murty, after all. 

Presently the young man took his departure, with 
a modest request that he might be allowed to drop in 
again often as he had done that evening. 

Denis O’Kavanagh walked with him to put him 
on the high-road. No sooner had the two men gone 
than the babel of feminine voices, to which Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh listened with a good-natured, ironic smile, 
broke out. 

Wasn’t Julia an omadhawn to bring him into the 
kitchen like that ? ” 

To think of Mr. Mortimer sitting over the kitchen 
fire smoking with father like as if he was no more 
than Pat Eyan or Michael O’Planagan ! ” 

** I didn’t think so very much of his looks ! ” 

Imagine such an old pipe — not even silver- 
mounted ! ” 

“ The neighbours will be furious at his coming here 
first. Prank and Andy will have carried the news.” 

Presently they were scattered to the occupations 


LANDLORD AND TENANT 


49 


O’Kavanagh’s coining had interrupted. Bella and 
Katie disappeared through the door, discussing the 
question of the heir’s marriage. Would it be Mary- 
Craven, or one of Lady Grace’s twin daughters ? Bella 
was for a Miss Grace: Katie was inclined to bet on 
Miss Craven’s chances. 

As the door closed behind them, the grandmother 
put her hands to her ears with a half-comical gesture 
and a little sigh of relief. 

“ He’s a very pleasant young gentleman,” she said. 
“ But I don’t really suppose we shall see him again. 
Wait till the Quality gets hold of him ! ” 

‘*He said we were his cousins,” put in Julia, 
faltering. 

“’Twas handsome of him,” said the old woman, 
cynically, “ but his wife won’t see it, nor his children 
won’t see it. There is a wide gap between O’Kava- 
naghs of Moyle and O’Kavanaghs of the Keep.” 

Why did Julia’s face fall ? She felt as though her 
grandmother had suddenly flung a douche of cold water 
over her when something had been giving her a feeling 
of pleasurable warmth. Of course he would not come 
again. The quality had not yet found him out. It 
was all very well once in a way to sit over the kitchen 
fire and smoke a pipe with her father and drink tea 
in their parlour. But, of course, it would not happen 
again. 


50 


JULIA 


The grandmother glanced at her from under her 
large lids and her expression was one of compunctious 
tenderness. 

“I have a message for you from Sister Cecilia, 
child,” she said. You are to go to see her to-morrow. 
The nuns from Spain have sent them home a box of 
grand things. You are to go to see them, and have 
tea at the Convent. And she asked me — this is a 
great thing, Ju — if I wouldn’t let her train your voice 
for the choir on Sundays. You’d like that, Julia? 
Maybe ’tis teaching you the organ she’d be. I declare 
I’d be out of myself with pride if you were singing 
with the nuns on Sunday.” 

“ I know,” said Julia, in a low voice. It was an 
old project of Sister Cecilia’s to have Julia singing in 
the choir. Somehow it did not delight Julia to-day, 
as it would have done yesterday, to know the thing 
long spoken of was to come to pass. 

And you’ll go ? I’ll have your frock ready ironed 
for you.” 

‘‘Yes, I’ll go.” 

“ The Quality can be very pleasant,” said old Mrs. 
Kavanagh, as though she were thinking her own 
thoughts, “ especially if the rent is never a day behind ; 
and, thank God, it needn’t be that with us. I re- 
member when my father lived under Lord Castle- 
connell, her ladyship often sat down to a cup of tea 


LANDLOKD AND TENANT 


51 


with my mother, as humble and pleasant as could be. 
Indeed, the higher they are, the simpler they are. 
But, Julia, love, that’s just because they know there’s 
such a great difference between that nobody could be 
thinking of looking across it. ’Tis the half-mounted 
is the proudest and most particular about themselves, 
because they’re none too sure of where they are. But 
I’d never set too much store by the friendships of the 
Quality. There is only one place where we’re all 
equal, and that is in the sight of God.” 


CHAPTER V 


THAT SWEET ENEMY 

Miss Maey Ckayen was standing with her back to 
the fire in the breakfast-room, drawing on her riding- 
gauntlets. She was a clear- skinned, bright-eyed, rosy- 
cheeked girl ; her shining, pale, fair hair was arranged 
in a bewildering mass of coils and plaits under her 
little hard hat; her habit fitted her full, graceful 
figure like a glove. 

Mrs. Craven, who had not quite finished her 
breakfast, sat looking at this one child of hers as 
though she were the sun in the sky, as indeed she was 
the sun in her sky. 

‘‘ I do hope it won’t rain all day,” she said, glancing 
out at the soft mist which was falling. ‘‘You came 
home the other day so wet, darling. It can’t really 
be good for you.” 

“That was because I’d been in the river,” her 
daughter said calmly. “It’s a very good sort of 
hunting-day. As for wet, that rain wouldn’t damp 
anything. It’s good for the complexion.” 


THAT SWEET ENEMY 


53 


'' You won’t go through the river to-day, I trust ? ” 

“ It depends on whether the fox goes that way or 
not,” Miss Craven responded. 

“Mr. Dacre said you could quite easily have 
crossed by the bridge as he did.” 

“ I dare say, and come in at the heel of the hunt as 
he did. But I don’t particularly want to cross the 
river. I had to wring out my habit afterwards. 
Captain Waldron helped me. Still, it was uncom- 
monly heavy about my feet; there was no drying in 
the wind.” 

“You shouldn’t do wild things like that, Mary. 
It’s all very fine now, when you’re young, darling ; but 
it means rheumatism when you’re old.” 

“ I can’t imagine myself with rheumatism ; besides, 
the whole hunt was in the river. Sir James was at 
the heels of the dogs. He was wet from head to foot 
if you like, for his mare stepped into a hole. He 
doesn’t think of rheumatism, and he’s sixty-five.” 

“ Mr. Dacre said a good many riders went round by 
the bridge. It was only a little way upstream.” 

“ The slow-and-sure ones like himself.” 

“ You didn’t do it to annoy him, Mary ? ” 

“As though I could. We were pounding away 
through Cratloe Wood when I remembered him. I 
wondered if he’d fallen in ; but Captain Waldron, who 
noticed me looking behind, told me he had seen him 


54 


JULIA 


go off to the bridge. He’d promised me a lead, too. 
As though I wanted a lead from him.” 

Mr. Dacre at this moment entered the room. He 
was wearing pink, which became his rather heavy, 
dark face. He was a massively built young man, with 
a slowness of speech which Miss Craven found at 
times exasperating ; a logical mind which in argument 
would have been sure to confute her flighty hypotheses 
if she had not had a way of abandoning the position 
and routing the enemy by sheer nconsequence, 
and a humorous mouth, which at times made her 
suspicious of him. Only that it was too ridiculous 
to suppose that an Englishman could laugh at her. 
And all the world knew that the English had no sense 
of humour. 

Jim Dacre was the younger son of Lord Lumley. 
He had been destined for the Church and a family 
living ; but when he had come to an age at which the 
preparation ought to begin he had absolutely refused 
to enter a theological school anywhere. 

“The younger son has always been the parson,” 
Lord Lumley said, aghast. “And what’s to become 
of the living, Jim, if you won’t have it ? It’s worth 
eighteen hundred a year, and it has the prettiest 
rectory in Sussex. Your great-uncle, Algernon, has 
savings too, and I’ve been hoping that, seeing how 
indecently long he’s kept the living, he’d see that it 


THAT SWEET ENEMY 


55 


was his duty to leave the savings to you. Your 
brother Aylsmere puts a severe strain on my resources. 
I can’t afford to do much for you.” 

“ I don’t think I asked you to,” said Jim, placidly. 
“ As for the living, give it to Grayson when it falls 
vacant. I hope that won’t be for a hundred years.” 

Lord Lumley passed by this expression of Jim’s 
hope. 

'' Grayson ! ” he said. “ That odd little man, with 
socialistic, ideas. I can’t see Grayson in the family 
living, somehow. The perpetual curacy of Slow-in- 
the-Wold suits him better.” 

Oh, come, sir ; perpetual curacies are apt to pall, 
especially when the perpetual stipend is something 
like a hundred per annum. Grayson’s a saint; he 
ought to have a better chance. However, there’s no 
use discussing the family living yet, since Uncle 
Algernon is as good a man at eighty as others at sixty. 
May he see his century ! ” 

If he does, there will be no chance at all for your 
friend, the perpetual curate,” grumbled Lord Lumley, 
who was fond of his younger son. 

Jim, unlike Aylsmere, had given his father no 
trouble. In fact, he had been so complaisant hitherto 
that his jibbing at the family living was a strange 
happening which Lord Lumley could never have 
anticipated. 


56 


JULIA 


What is it, Jim ? ” he asked, his wonder growing. 

I should have thought that for you, with your love 
for country life, the Church would be an ideal thing. 
You’d be squarson at Little Beedham. There are no 
poor ; there’s very agreeable society ; and your Uncle 
Algernon has never had but one service a week. The 
people wouldn’t stand an open church and the new- 
fangled ways. And you’ve never said a word against 
it before. I thought it would have suited you down 
to the ground.” 

‘‘When Grayson gets it he’ll make them sit up,” 
said Jim, calmly. “ As for my reasons for refusing ” — 
his colour deepened, and he looked inexpressibly 
ashamed of himself — “ I’ve no call that way ; I’m not 
good enough. Hang it all, I don’t believe in entering 
the Church as a mere profession ! ” 

Lord Lumley looked on this sensitiveness on his 
son’s part as a mere bee in his bonnet, and carried the 
matter to Jim’s mother. 

“ What’s up with Jim, I’d like to know, AUcia,” 
he asked. “ Not good enough for the family living ! 
He is the first younger son of the family who thought 
that. Not good enough ! You don’t suppose the boy’s 
been getting into any scrapes ? ” 

“ No, no.” Jim’s mother softly placed the tips of 
her fingers together and looked far away, as Jim had 
an uncomfortable way of doing sometimes. “Jim 


THAT SWEET ENEMY 


57 


hasn’t been in any scrapes. . • • Jim’s my good boy. 
It’s only that . . . Jim’s religious. Have you never 
found it out, Carrington ? To be sure you wouldn’t. 
He’s thin-skinned about it and covers it up, but it’s 
there all the same.” 

“ God bless my soul, no ! ” Lord Lumley almost 
shouted. ‘'Are you sure, Alicia? He never got it 
from me. Ho Dacre was ever . . . like that. We 
left all that to the parsons — not the family-living ones, 
you know, but the other fellows. We always stood 
for Church and State, of course, but . . . pious ! Bless 
my soul, no ! Are you sure ? Jim’s afraid of nothing. 
As straight a shot and as good a rider as ever I saw.” 

“That doesn’t prevent it,” Lady Lumley said, 
laughing softly to herself. Perhaps she knew where 
Jim got those strange un-Dacre-like tendencies as 
well as the grace of humour. “ Oh, you won’t find 
Jim singing hymns, Carrington, or preaching on the 
village green, or doing anything eccentric. Probably 
he’s quite unaware himself of any streak of piety not 
common to his forefathers. But he is too reverent 
to enter the Church without feeling any special 
vocation for it.” 

“It’s the oddest thing I ever heard of,” Lord 
Lumley said, still mystified. “ The family living has 
never left the family before. The younger sons have 
always held it, with credit to themselves and the 


58 


JULIA 


Church. And here is my youngest son proposing to 
hand it to Grayson when it falls in — Grayson, who, 
the only time I ever heard him preach took the text of 
Lazarus and the Eich Man, and said the most extra- 
ordinary things, really and truly the most extraordinary 
things. All his pity was for the rich and for those 
in high places, because it was so hard for them to be 
saved. He talked about us as though he could cry 
over us; I assure you, Alicia, it is true — and there 
I was sitting by the Duke, and the two of us rather 
red in the face. I thought the Duke was in for an 
attack of the gout ; but he assured me afterwards that 
Grayson hadn’t seen either of us : a most unlikely 
thing. I hope Jim’s not taking up those kind of 
ideas.” 

“He’s been a good deal with Mr. Grayson, I 
believe,” the mother said, with her quiet smile; and 
then passed from the subject of the perpetual curate. 

“Did he give you any idea of what he wanted 
to be?” 

“I’m afraid I never asked him, Alicia. I know 
the fellow looks as if he were cut out for a soldier — 
a dragoon; but the money won’t run to that. Two 
sons in the Household Cavalry! It’s out of the 
question.” 

“So Jim would probably say,” the mother 
answered. 


THAT SWEET ENEMY 


59 


On further inquiry it appeared that Jim had some 
definite ideas on the subject of a career. He wanted 
to become a land-agent. He had met the previous 
year, at Marienbad, an Irish land-agent — none other 
than Mr. Alexander Craven, who had been accompanied 
by his wife and daughter. 

They had made friends with young Dacre, and 
Mr. Craven's description of the land-agent’s life in 
Ireland commended itself very strongly to Jim Dacre. 

He mentioned the meeting now for the first time 
to his father ; but said nothing at all of a Miss Craven, 
Aylsmere had been wont to remark of his younger 
brother that Jim, for all his apparent softness and 
his sleepy smile, was “ deep — infernally deep.” Perhaps 
this reticence of Jim’s gave colour to Aylsmere’s 
statement. Perhaps it was only that he was reticent. 
He waxed quite expansive, for him, over the open-air 
life, the riding, the shooting, the fishing, the hunting. 
Of the clear-skinned, grey-eyed, satin-headed Mary 
Craven not a word, 

Mr. Craven was quite willing to receive into the 
Estates Office a young gentleman who desired to learn 
the duties of a land-agent. 

I call it providential, Alicia,” said Lord Lumley, 
in a sudden access of piety; but, to be sure, Providence 
has always looked after the Dacres. There will be 
the Duke’s Irish estates. His man is getting old. 


60 


JULIA 


He’ll be resigning presently; and Jim can walk into 
a berth worth three thousand a year.” 

^‘The family living is not much more than half 
that,” said Lady Lumley, with that sound in her voice 
which rather baffled his lordship, as though something 
had amused her; but on this occasion he was too 
absorbed to notice it. 

“You know the Lumley motto,” he said, rubbing 
his hands: “‘Heaven directs us.’ I stand by the 
Lumley motto.” 

This was the manner of the entrance of Jim Dacre 
into the household at Knockbeg, as Mr. Craven’s place 
was called. The comfortable, big red house, with its 
many conveniences, its well-kept lawns and gardens, 
sat delightfully on “ the little hill ” which gave it its 
name. It had kitchen gardens and orchards and little 
pleasances innumerable, and it looked over its own 
park lands and pastures, and then across a lonely 
country intersected with many rivers to the moun- 
tains. 

It had been a wrench to Jim Dacre to leave 
his mother. There was a secret sympathy between 
those two, beyond the bond of a common humour, 
deep calling to deep, which no one had suspected; 
something which never was spoken of between the 
two most intimately concerned. Lady Lumley loved, 
with a difference, her ruddy-faced, unintellectual 


THAT SWEET ENEMY 61 

husband, and her kind, careless Aylsmere; but her 
feeling for Jim was another matter. 

JNone knew but herself how long and diligently 
she had sought the Unknown God, in what strange, 
obscure little fanes, among what discredited sects, and 
had at last, as she believed, found Him, or had found 
Him in so far that she had reached a stage of 
acquiescence and calm in which she awaited the 
revelation of His will for her. Even to Jim she could 
not talk of these things, and of how her life had become 
a long waiting, an incessant listening for the Voice 
that should guide her. But Jim was the child of her 
soul as well as the child of her body. For him, too 
were possible the spiritual exaltations and desolations 
she had known. Jim was groping his way, also, 
through the distractions and darkness of his youth, to 
the Unknown, yet apprehended, God. 

Miss Craven never suspected the possibilities of 
the young Englishman, whom from the beginning she 
teased, wrangled with, incessantly provoked to con- 
troversy, plagued in a thousand ways, quite unconscious 
that he did half the plaguing. 

It had been the same way at Marienbad. Indeed, 
if Jim had been an ordinary person he would have 
been repelled by Mary Craven's reception of an 
interest in her which he had no doubt she understood 
however little obvious it might be to other people. 


62 


JULIA 


But, being Jim, lie overlooked her wayward moods 
for her occasional flashes of feeling, generous and 
compunctious. Her brilliancy, her gaiety, her young, 
conquering air he found irresistible; and he had a 
notion that if she were moved to be kind, her kindness 
might change the face of the world for him. 

Oddly enough, it was the Englishman in Jim Dacre 
that Mary Craven, herself of English descent, resented 
with such apparent passionateness. Of course, it is 
the Anglo-Irish who are the irreconcilables, and not 
the complaisant and easy-going Celt. Even your most 
thorough-paced adherent to the English connection you 
will find possessed of an enigmatical bitterness against 
the country towards which he professes loyalty. Let 
the same man be converted to the National idea, and 
you will find him the most illogical of partisans and 
enemies. There will be no Irish blacks and no English 
whites for him. There may be a Union of Hearts 
between Celt and Saxon; but to the Anglo-Irishman, 
more especially if he calls himself Irish, the marriage 
will be a thing unnatural, impossible. 

Mary Craven, daughter of the most Conservative of 
fathers and timid of mothers, had announced herself at 
an early age an Irish patriot. Her mother knew better 
than to protest ; her father, to whom the handsome girl 
was as the apple of his eye, laughed good-humouredly, 
and bade Mary not to embroil him with his fellows. 


THAT SWEET ENEMY 


63 


But, after all, Mary’s patriotism came at a time 
wheu it carried no very heavy pains and penalties; 
not that they would have deterred the young lady if 
it had. There had been the most curious approaches 
and rapprochement between parties hitherto irrecon- 
cilable. No one could say from where it came, that 
instinct towards a hearing and an understanding of 
each other, that converging which in time found a 
plane of feeling on which both parties could meet. 
Following a period of black and bitter war it was the 
more astounding. 

Anyhow, Mary Craven found herself, to her disgust, 
doing no more than people who did not call themselves 
patriots in her sense were doing. She could not 
devote herself to the study of Irish history, the Irish 
I literature and language, to the promulgation of the 
Irish idea, without finding the unprogressive, aristo- 
cratic ladies and gentlemen doing just the same 
thing. She felt in herself the capacity for heroic self- 
sacrifice for the cause of her country; but nothing 
better presented itself to her than to be caught in a 
movement which for the time seemed to have made 
every one Irish. 

She tried to make up for her lack of opportunity 
by avowing sentiments which a decade earlier would 
have shut the doors of a good many houses against 
her. Now her spirit and her beauty only pleased 


64 


JULIA 


gentlemen, who, like their forebears before them, were 
shining lights of the Orange Lodges, and ladies whose 
memories ought to have been long enough to take in 
the irreconcilable days of the Land League. 

The disappointment of her aspirations Mary re- 
venged on Jim Dacre. If she could have done it 
more thoroughly, there had been less chance of an 
imbroglio. But, as I have said, she had generosities, 
she had compunctions. If his life depended on it, 
Jim could not have refrained from setting Mary right, 
from breathing on her impalpable glittering bubbles, 
from laughing at her inconsistencies. But after she 
had been impertinent to him, had twitted him with 
his English slowness, as though she herself were not 
new-grafted on the Irish tree, there had been a look in 
her eyes, the slightest veiling of their brilliance, that 
asked for pardon. Perhaps she was too feminine to 
endure being detestable to a man. So far she went, 
but no further. 

Anyhow, there was something about Jim that 
made her a little more encouraging to Captain Waldron 
and others than she would otherwise have been, for 
she was as little of a flirt as a pretty, admired, very 
feminine girl can be. And the worst of it was that 
she never could be sure she disturbed Jim’s easy good- 
humour in the slightest degree. 


CHAPTER VI 


A HUNTING MORNING 

is very good of papa to spare you,’* said Miss 
Craven, with malicious intent, as they rode between 
hedges of great height and luxuriance, where the 
scarlet leaves of briar and wild cherry, the fruit of 
wild rose and quicken, made splendours against a 
background of bronze and purple like a pheasant’s 
plumage. 

Jim Dacre turned a reflective eye upon her. 

** You think I play too much. Miss Craven ? ” 

“ I never accused you of playing.” 

“ Let me put it a different way, and say that you 
think me an idler,” Jim said placidly. 

“I don’t know that I have thought about it. 
Perhaps you don’t care for the office work. Papa said 
they had to take the grind of the office work in his 
day.” 

“I certainly prefer riding over the country from 
one farm to another. I like the riding, and then I 


66 


JULIA 


find it quite pleasant to sit and smoke a pipe with 
the tenants, and talk over farming prospects and new 
machinery. I suppose I’m naturally lazy.” 

‘‘Ah! Papa says you have found your way into 
their confidence. That is a very remarkable thing.” 

“ Why, Miss Craven ? ” 

The downrightness of the question nonplussed her. 

“Oh, well, I don’t know,” she said, a little awk- 
wardly. “ You see, you are an Englishman.” 

“ They don’t seem to object to that.” 

“ Some one told me the other day that the people 
here would trust an Englishman before they would 
trust one of themselves. I should hate to think that 
was true,” Miss Craven said, with a vehemence that 
became her. 

“ They don’t seem to have trusted us overmuch, or 
we have not repaid their trust; something has gone 
wrong, or why is there still an Irish problem ? ” 

“Perhaps there won’t be much longer,” said Miss 
Craven, hopefully. “When we can do without you 
we shall be able to forgive you. But ... I wonder 
why you became an Irish land-agent ? ” 

He turned and looked at her audaciously, and for 
the life of her she could not have helped lowering her 
eyes. 

“ Do you really want to know. Miss Craven ? ” 

“ I only asked out of pure idleness,” she answered. 


A HUNTING MORNING 


67 


with a shade of nervousness. ‘*It isn’t a profession 
I feel very hopeful about. Papa says there won’t be 
room for any agents soon. He feels pushed aside 
himself, poor dear, by this very energetic grand-nephew 
of Sir Jasper’s. He’ll be Sir Mortimer one of these 
days, and wiU transact aU the business of the estate 
himself.” 

“I should have thought, with your opinions, that 
you would have approved of that.” 

Filial piety forbids it in this case. You wouldn’t 
have me take the bread out of my father’s and mother’s 
mouth, to say nothing of my own.” 

‘'It is not I who have revolutionary sentiments. 
Miss Craven, at least, not very revolutionary. But I 
dare say your father is right. The Irish land-agent 
as he is has no element of permanence about him. 
He is the sign of absenteeism. When Irish land- 
owners live on their own land they will have stewards 
and bailiffs, but not land-agents.” 

“ Then why on earth ? ” 

She pulled up suddenly, and slashed with her whip 
at the brilliant hedges. 

“Because, Miss Craven, as you have found out, I 
like an outdoor life and an easy one. I am fond of 
sport, and your country is a paradise for sportsmen. 
Because I thought I should like the people. You’ve 
no idea how the Saxon goes down before your country 


68 


JULIA 


and your people — the intelligent and responsive Saxon, 
that is to say, and not the class that makes us a 

first-rate Power. Because Irish ladies ” 

Oh, I didn’t mean a catechism,” said Mary Craven, 
turning very red. Supposing I race you from here 
as far as the Duke’s Wall? There is a five-barred 
gate into Larry Spillane’s cabbage-field that I think 
Flora could take. It’s a very pretty jump, for the road 
is high and the field sinks away below the gate. You 
know where the roads run at right angles ? ” 

“ You would break the mare’s knees.” 

‘'That I shouldn’t. My pretty girl . . . .” She 
leant over and patted the mare’s silky neck. “She 
knows I wouldn’t hurt her for the world. She could 
do it quite easily. You see, she’s accustomed to Irish 
hunting. English horses, of course ” 

“ Are accustomed to a heavier country, and a heavier 
people,” put in Dacre, “and to — to — more^ considerate 
riders perhaps. Selim can trust me not to give him a 
task beyond his strength. If I asked him, he would 
negotiate the five-barred gate quite as cheerfully as 
your Flora. Only ...” 

“ Only what ? ” 

“ I feel bound in honour not to. I think that feeling 
sums up all our relationship to animals and children 
and dependents.” 

She flashed a quick look at him, but made no 


A HUNTING MOKNING 69 

remark. He had impressed her as he often had, though 
she would not acknowledge it. 

“ Papa says,” she went on, after jogging along for 
a few seconds in silence, that Sir Jasper has taken on 
a new lease of life. He thinks he must have been 
very lonely, poor old soul. We did not suspect so 
much feeling in him. I know papa really thought that 
his mind was all but gone.” 

“ It seems to have come back. I met him driving 
with Mr. O’Kavanagh the other day in an old phaeton 
that must have been lying by a good many years. The 
young man was driving as slowly and cautiously as 
though he had a newly born baby out for an airing. 
The old man was lying back among his rugs and 
cushions with the most contented air.” 

“It is quite a touching thing,” Mary Craven 
said seriously. “It touches papa even; you know 
there is nothing very soft-hearted about papa. Mr. 
O’Kavanagh devotes a lot of time to Sir Jasper, 
just sitting by him, and saying a word to him now 
and again. The old man is quite restless when he 
is out of the house. To be sure, Mr. O’Kavanagh is 
used to sick people and their ways. His mother, of 
course ” 

“ Ah, yes ; I’ve heard she was an invalid.” 

Jim’s eyes darkened and softened wonderfully, and 
Mary Craven, catching the expression, wondered what 


70 


JULIA 


could have caused it. Only yesterday he had written 
to his own mother, who had not been well. ‘‘There 
is only one thing which I am quite sure I could not 
bear, and I pray that may never befall me.” But it 
was only to her he could have said so much. 

They were turning in at the entrance-gate to Sir 
James Langley's house, which was known as Boxcote 
Hall. Various horsemen and horsewomen followed 
them, or had preceded them, up the long avenue of 
beeches. They were greeting and being greeted on all 
sides. Apparently it was going to be a good meet. 

They overtook a pair of very pretty girls in a 
phaeton. They were soft, dark, brilliant creatures, 
with something of the roundness and smoothness of 
childhood in their faces. They were the twin daughters 
of Lady Grace, a widow who lived at Lacklands, a 
pretty cottage not far from the gates of Moyle, which 
she rented from Sir Jasper O’Kavanagh. 

There were a couple of horsemen riding by the little 
phaeton, one a soldierly looking, bronzed, lean man, 
whose hair had begun to show thin at the temples. He 
was Sir Patrick Lorimer, the brother of the parson, 
home on leave from India, where he had a military 
command. The other horseman, who rode his brown 
cob with obvious awkwardness, was Harry Lorimer, 
the rectory boy, a naval lieutenant, whose leave happily 
coincided with his uncle’s. 


A HUNTING MORNING 7l 

Pretty creatures/’ said Jim Dacre, as they left the 
phaeton behind. 

"‘Who?” asked Miss Craven, sardonically. ‘^Sir 
Patrick Lorimer and Harry ? ” 

Those two girls. Don’t you think them very 
pretty ? They are like little humming-birds, and they 
have such a kittenish softness. I’m not surprised those 
fellows seem badly hit.” 

Her lips met in a sharp line, as though she had 
snapped them tightly. 

'' I love Lady Grace,” she said. 

“Ah, the mother. Yes, I know you are friends. 
She seems a charming woman. Do they belong to 
this part of the country ? ” 

“ Hot at all. Lady Grace used to live in Dublin. 
Her husband. Sir Vernon, was a very brilliant person, 
a great favourite in society, I believe ; but, dying early, 
he left his widow and children badly off. Lady Grace 
heard of Lacklands somehow, and settled down here 
with one servant and those two children. I am very 
glad she did, for I think her the most beautiful of 
women.” 

“ I’ve no doubt she reciprocates.” 

“ I am quite sure she does not. But she is fond of 
me, as fond as she can be of any one, seeing how those 
girls engross her. She is eaten up with her maternal 
passion.” 


72 


JULIA 


He looked as though the jealous phrase bewildered 
and pleased him. It sounded to him as though it 
ought to be applied to another kind of love, not the 
maternal, which he only knew as something beneficent 
as Heaven itself; but he made no comment. 

They were on the lawn now, where the huntsman 
sat in the midst of his dogs, and the master, a ruddy, 
white-haired old veteran, was the centre of an animated 
group, many of them ladies. Sir James was a great 
favourite with women, since he treated old and young, 
pretty and plain alike, with an air as though he saw 
the goddess in them. 

‘*Ah, Miss Mary, nothing the worse for your im- 
mersion the other day ? he said to Mary Craven. 
“ Keep near me to-day, for there's something lost from 
the day, no matter how good it is, when I don’t find 
you at my elbow at the kill.” 

“You’d better give me a lead. Sir James,” said 
Mary, mischievously. 

“ Oh— ho ! give you a lead, indeed ! You give me 
a lead, and nice places you’d lead me into. I fancy 
myself riding up and down to find soft places for you ; 
and I should like to know where you’d be by the time 
I’d found them.” 

“ Gone away. Sir James, I expect,” said Mary Craven. 

“ Don’t let her play pranks on you, my dear boy,” 
the old man said, turning to Jim Dacre. “ She’s been 


A HUNTING MORNING 


73 


at it with me ever since she was five years old. In 
fact, she has led me about by the nose ever since. Ah, 
here’s Mr. O’Kavanagh. How is my old friend Sir 
Jasper to-day? I was delighted that he knew me, 
and remembered so many things that happened to us 
together. I thought his mind was quite clouded, 
quite clouded. Miss Craven, you know Mr. O’Kava- 
nagh ? But to be sure you do.’* 

“We have met once,” said Mary Craven, and then 
glanced casually at Jim Dacre. 

He had turned about on his horse, and was looking 
with an admiring expression at the Grace twins, who 
had just arrived and were receiving a good deal of 
homage. It was the expression with which one looks 
at a delightful child ; but it made Mary Craven frown. 

“ I’ve never hunted Irish country before,” Mortimer 
O’Kavanagh said. 

He looked the picture of slim elegance; and per- 
haps the contrast was pointed by Jim Dacre’s heavy 
build and the square way in which he sat his big 
chestnut horse. 

“ Oh, it’s quite easy,” said Mary Craven, “ once 
you’re used to it.” 

“ I dare say. I expect to come to grief all the same. 
I’ve never hunted much anywhere ; and to begin over 
Irish country ! Don’t you admire my courage ? ” 

“ If you’ve only hunted in the Shires, and that not 


74 


JULIA 


very mucli,” put in Jim Dacre, ** you’ll have to be very 
careful. There are some nasty jumps.” 

Which you never take. You can always be sure 
of prudent advice from Mr. Dacre/’ said Mary, with 
flashing eyes. 

It’s quite true. I always go round and open the 
gates.” 

Mr. Dacre holds his person very precious,” Miss 
Craven said disdainfully. 

‘‘ It isn’t much of a person, I know,” said Jim ; 
‘"but as it’s the only one I’ve got, or can get, I’m 
bound to be careful of it.” 

This flippancy displeased Miss Craven. Sir J ames 
had ridden towards the hounds now, and the riders 
were moving in a mass the same way. Now they were 
trotting down the avenue. Miss Craven between Jim 
Dacre and Mortimer O’Kavanagh, close upon the 
master ; and the huntsman, Barney O’Callaghan, with 
the straining hounds, whining with eagerness to be off. 

Suddenly she inclined herself with an air of great 
sweetness towards young O’Kavanagh. 

“ Don’t let any one crab the Irish hunting for you,” 
she said. “ There are jumps, but it is delightful. Even 
Mr. Dacre says so. The going is splendid, not like 
the heavy English going. And I’ll come back and 
look after you if anything happens to you. Supposing 
you try keeping close to me.” 


A HUNTING MORNING 75 

“ I shouldn’t advise it,” said Jim Dacre, in an 
absent-minded way. 

“I shall be delighted to try,” said O’Kavanagh, 
gallantly. 

He did try, and his gallantry was suitably rewarded, 
for beyond a spill in a brook, be came to no barm 
during the day ; and be was never far from Flora’s 
chestnut flanks either. Miss Craven expressed her- 
self at the end of the day as being proud of her pupil. 
Perhaps a little spice of exaggeration crept into her 
compliments, because Jim Dacre, riding homeward with 
them, did not seem concerned about or ashamed of 
the fact that he had been, as usual, left behind. 

It would doubtless have staggered Lord Lumley 
if he had known the number of gates Jim had opened, 
or reported himself to have opened, during the day, 
the number of miles he had ridden round, or was 
supposed to have ridden round. 

Mortimer O’Kavanagh heard him with a grin which 
had something of incredulity in it. 

I thought you were very well up at the end,” he 

said. 

But Mary Craven said nothing, even when Jim 
Dacre remarked that his ideal of hunting was like 
Kipling’s, to sit at home in an armchair and read 
Surtees. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE FEIEND OF THE HOUSE 

Mr. Murty, as the tenants called him, did not forget 
the very cordial invitation that Denis O’Kavanagh had 
given him to come again. In fact, he came many 
times; and although Mrs. O’Kavanagh, between the 
visits, was apt to refer to them as somewhat trouble- 
some events, yet she always unbent when the young 
gentleman appeared, and was ready to open out her 
store of memories for his benefit. 

Denis O’Kavanagh had not made use of a figure of 
speech when he had referred to his mother as a Penian. 
Her husband, Denis’s father, had belonged to the 
Fenian body, and apparently his wife had been entirely 
in the confidence of the conspirators. She had gone 
hither and thither on their errands ; and it was strange 
enough to look at her sitting in the chimney corner, 
with her frilled white cap on her head, the knitting- 
needles incessantly flashing through her fingers, the 
quietness of her years on her face, while she talked of 
conspiracy and danger and death. 


THE FRIEND OP THE HOUSE 77 

O’Kavanagh delighted in hearing her. Ah, that 
was life ! He smiled over himself and the other young 
gentlemen of the Oxford Union airing their jejune 
theories of life, propounding their doctrinaire views of 
manners and morals, with the first down of manhood 
on their lips. He began to appreciate the fact that it 
was life and experience — a life lived greatly, an experi- 
ence of intense and passionate things — which had set 
that sweetness on the old woman’s face. With her 
looks she ought to have been heroically hard. The 
bright, steely grey eyes, the high, handsome nose, 
the firm mouth, the smoothness and rich colour of the 
whole face, even in old age, did not promise softness. 
Hor was Mrs. O’Kavanagh soft, except where Julia 
was concerned ; but only tolerant to compassion. Hers 
was rather the mind of a large-minded man than the 
mind of a woman. 

On the wall of the parlour, where O’Kavanagh 
sat to the plentiful high tea — Mrs. O’Kavanagh had 
far too much respect for Sir Jasper’s heir to give him 
his tea, as they themselves had it, in the beautiful 
big kitchen, with the untidy servant sitting at a table 
in the background — there were a couple of portraits of 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh and her husband in early married 
life. 

The man, with his bottle-green coat and brass 
buttons, his frilled shirt-front, his small clothes and 


78 


JULIA 


long stockings, his bunch of seals dangling at his fob, 
looked like a person of consideration. His wife, with 
her flowing black silk dress, and lace collar fastened 
with a cameo-brooch, her Paisley shawl draped across 
her arms, was also an imposing-looking person. Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh had been as handsome in her youth as in 
her old age, though hardly as lovable. 

The portraits, as well as the house itself, attested 
the great respectability of the family, backed as it was 
by their descent from the same stock as Sir Jasper 
himself. 

Indeed, the whole house breathed of ancient con- 
sideration, even although it was situated in Ireland, 
where social conditions pass ; not in England, where 
they are rooted. 

The kitchen had the air of an old manor-house 
kitchen in England, which in its day had been the 
dining-hall. And that patriarchal system of meals in 
the kitchen carried a certain dignity with it, the 
kitchen being what it was and the people what they 
were. 

Perhaps the Keep had originally been built by an 
English settler. The square tower at the corner, which 
gave it its name, had surely been constructed for 
purposes of defence by some one planted among an 
alien population, and with the daily necessity of 
guarding life and possessions. 


THE FRIEND OP THE HOUSE 


79 


By this time the house was familiar to O’Kavanagh. 
He had penetrated beyond the parlour, with its con- 
ventional tastelessness, to the nest of little rooms each 
side of the hall door — the hall door which none seemed 
to use, since every one came by the kitchen entrance. 
They were bowery, flowery little rooms, bedrooms with 
great four-poster beds, which set one to wondering how 
they could ever have been got into the rooms ; and a 
general dimness and greenness of aspect, because the 
creepers about the house had interlaced themselves 
across the windows. The rooms had old-fashioned 
mahogany furniture, a great number of pictures, and 
all manner of odds and ends, such as accumulate in 
a house where the famHy has been undisturbed for 
generations. 

He had peeped within the rooms with a grave and 
respectful curiosity, pausing on the thresholds in a 
way that pleased Mrs. O’Kavanagh with an appeal 
to her finer sense. The young men who came round 
her granddaughters, except Julia, thick as bees after 
honey, would never have trodden so softly nor gone 
bareheaded as Mr. Murty did. 

Protesting against the fatigue he caused her, he 
followed her up the winding stairs of the strong tower 
that gave the house its name. It had been modernized 
in so far that ordinary windows had been substituted 
on one side for the original arrow-slits. The date of 


80 JULIA 

the substitution was unknown. The tower contained 
three rooms, one above the other. They were bed- 
rooms ; but only one was occupied — the upper one. 

Ju would have it,” the grandmother said. She 
likes the loneliness. Her sisters would die if they had 
to sleep up here. I was against it, because I thought 
the place damp ; but she would have it. There's a fine 
view from the window.” 

She crossed the threshold, and he could not choose 
but follow her. There was a glorious view, this clear 
winter day, over miles of pasture and bog-land to the 
lakes with their hundred islands, and the snow-clad 
peaks soaring into the clouds where only the eagles 
dared to follow them. 

He noticed the great depth of the walls, the im- 
mense strength of the building. The room had been 
papered incongruously with cheap, common paper, 
that showed great patches of damp. 

His eyes came from the glorious sweep of soft, 
exquisite country, all shining in a haze of gold, back to 
the square room. There was a personality about it 
that did not belong to the other rooms he had seen. 

Cheap prints of beautiful subjects had been pasted 
on the walls where the damp-stains were most glaring. 
A framed photograph of Eossetti’s Beata Beatrix stood 
on a chest of drawers. There were a couple of coloured 
prints of the Arundel Society side by side with it — one 


THE FKIEND OF THE HOUSE 


81 


the Pieta of Francia in the London National Gallery, 
the other a Madonna and Child of Sassoferrato. There 
was a bookcase full of books, mostly dilapidated. In 
the great yawning fireplace there was a blue pot full 
of oak-branches that kept their bronze leaves. On a 
table in the window there was an open paint-box, some 
brushes, a vessel of water, and a palette. 

“ Miss Julia is an artist ? ” said O’Kavanagh, in a 
tone of surprise. 

The grandmother answered him, half-unwillingly 
proud. 

“Julia's accomplished,” she said. “She learnt it 
from the nuns. She has taken the picture she was 
doing to Sister Cecilia for her feast-day. They’ve 
taught her the embroidery, too. See here ! ” 

She took up a clean cloth from the table, and 
revealed under its protection a strip of white watered 
silk, with an embroidery, just begun, of grapes and 
corn, in gold and purple and scarlet thread. 

O’Kavanagh bent his eyes over it. 

“ French embroidery,” he said. “ I saw them 
making just such another design at Ypres a few years 
ago. I had no idea your granddaughter was so accom- 
plished. And these pictures ? ” 

“ The one in the middle ” — the old woman indicated 
the Beata Beatrix — “ Julia saw that in a shop in Cork 
one time she went there and she raved about it; so 

G 


82 


JULIA 


I sent for it and I put it where she’d find it. You’d 
think she’d eat me with joy. The others — well, the 
others Father John O’Driscoll brought home to Julia 
after he’d had a holiday and seen the real pictures. 
He knew what would please her. You don’t know 
Father O’Driscoll, Mr. Murty ? ” 

I believe I met him the other day. Is he a very 
big, rosy-faced priest, with grey hair ? He was climb- 
ing the side of Knockrea, and I was very sorry I 
wasn’t driving instead of riding, so that I might have 
given him a lift ! The snow was all over the hill.” 

That would be him. He’d be making a sick call 
to poor Mary McCarthy. She died soon after he’d 
seen her. Sure ’tis terrible desolate up there on the 
hill, especially when there’s snow. ’Tisn’t many would 
be like Father John, without a horse and trap of his 
own. But he gives all he has in charity. Yes, Father 
John brought Julia those two pictures from the only 
two holidays he ever had. He thinks a deal of Julia. 
To be sure, he christened her.” 

O’Kavanagh took a long lingering look round the 
square room as he prepared to follow Mrs. O’Kavanagh 
down the steep stairs. Bare and severe as it neces- 
sarily was, the place had the odour of femininity. A 
white petticoat, newly laundered, lying across the bed, 
a knot of ribbon, a wisp of soft filmy chiffon, thrilled 
him oddly. The windows were wide open, despite the 


THE FRIEND OF THE HOUSE 


83 


winter, and the cold, clear air from the mountains was 
sweet in the room, where it had for once routed the 
damp. ^ 

He had taken a great interest in the old house. So 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh said to herself after he had gone, 
adding that she’d have taken no one but the old blood 
where she did. It had been as though he felt the 
spirit of girlhood in those dim little places and un- 
covered his head before it. He had been where none 
of the girls’ admirers had ever been. She could not 
imagine herself taking Frank or Andrew, Larry or Joe 
or Cornelius that tour of the house. 

Yet it was that very afternoon that she said to her 
son, “ I wonder what does be bringing Mr. Murty so 
much about the place at all.” 

Yourself more than any one else,” Denis replied. 
'"It amuses me to hear you talk to him. You never 
told me half as much. What was it he called you the 
other evening ? ” 

“ The frankest of conspirators,” the old woman said 
smiling. He doesn’t know how much I keep back ! 
He hasn’t been long enough among us to know that 
when we talk the most we’re keeping back the 
most.” 

“He’s very pleasant,” said Denis. “The winter 
hasn’t been the same, with him dropping in of 
evenings.” 


84 


JULIA 


There wasn’t much conversation before, was 
there ? ” Mrs. O’Kavanagh said, with her air of amused 
tolerance ; with all those silly lads whispering at the 
ears of those giggling girls.” 

“Ay; yourself and myself and Julia and the dogs 
the only quiet and sensible people.” 

“ I wonder when he’ll give up coming ? ” 

“ Why should he give up ? ” 

“ It stands to reason he’ll give up sooner or later. 
Wait till he goes courting. Joe Quinlan was telling 
me that foolish mother of his was saying that there’s 
talk of Mr. Murty and Miss Mary Craven.” 

“ I never knew Bridget Quinlan yet that she hadn’t 
some story with her. By the way, motlier, have you 
noticed that Joe Quinlan comes a deal oftener than he 
used?” 

“ I don’t trouble myself with Joe Quinlan’s comings 
or goings,” said Mrs. O’Kavanagh, acidly. 

“ Mr. Murty’s more your style. Still, poor Joe’s a 
good lad. He’ll be well off, too, with what his uncle, 
Peter Finegan, has to leave him. He’s very steady, 
and not a bad-looking boy according to some people’s 
notions.” 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh put down her knitting into her 
lap and stared at her son. 

“ Do you think,” she asked very deliberately, “ that 
Joe’s coming after one of the girls? I think Katty 


THE FRIEND OF THE HOUSE 85 

fancies him. I suppose that’s what you mean with 
your talk of the farm ? ” 

I never thought of Katty. ’Tisn’t that way I see 
Joe’s eyes wandering at all. Sure you’re so taken up 
with Mr. Murty that you notice nothing.” 

Let Mr. Murty be ! ” Denis O’Kavanagh had a 
sensation as though he were a small boy once more, 
trembling before a gentle yet unalterably just tribunal. 

Let Mr. Murty be ! You haven’t been thinking of 
Joe Quinlan for Julia ? ” 

** Why not ? ” 

“Why not? She’s not for the likes of Joe 
Quinlan.” 

A quiver passed across Denis O’Kavanagh’s gentle, 
yet strong face, so like his mother’s, but more supine, 
less strongly marked, less of the eagle about it. 

“ What would you do with Julia ? ” he asked, and 
something like terror came into his face. “ You’re not 
thinking of the Convent for Julia ? ” 

“Would you marry her to Joe Quinlan to break 
her heart ? Or to any of the other boys ? Look at her, 
watch her ways, and see if she is fit for them. Her 
sisters’ meat is her poison. It would kill her if, to 
please you, she married one of them. Listen now, 
Denis ; Julia’s a lady. You can’t marry her to a 
common farmer or shopkeeper. In the Convent she 
would lead the life of a lady. Where would you wish 


86 


JULIA 


her to be better than among the nuns ? Can’t you give 
God one of your daughters ? ” 

I could, cheerfully j but not — not Julia. My heart 
is bound up in Julia.” 

So is mine.” 

“ Let the Convent be and I shan’t think of marriage 
for Julia. She shall go her own way. Only, don’t 
take her from me, mother.” 

'‘The Convent doesn’t take people against their 
wills. How can I make her go unless she wants to go ? 
But she’s not fit for the world she lives in. What has 
she got to do with Joe Quinlan or his kind ? And 
what would become of Julia if we left her in the world 
alone ? It has always been on my mind what was to 
become of Julia. ’Tis little she’d thank you if she 
knew you thought of Joe Quinlan for her ; yes, indeed, 
little enough.” 

“ ril say no more about Joe, if you won’t turn her 
mind towards the Convent.” 

The mother looked at him with a great softening of 
her whole face. 

“ Sure I’d do nothing, child — nothing. ’Tis only if 
it was to save Julia from great unhappiness. But 
what would be threatening her? There, rest easy; I 
think if she knows how much you want her — unless it 
was that some great unhappiness threatened her — she’d 
stay out of the Convent while you lived.” 


CHAPTEE VIII 


WITHOUT THE PKECINCTS 

J ULIA had been attracted towards the Convent life all 
her days, more than her grandmother, with all her 
plotting and planning, was aware. Even for a person 
so clear-sighted, so incapable of crooked or selfish 
dealing as Mrs. O’Kavanagh, it had been easy to 
believe, in this matter of Julia, that her own will 
must be the will of God. But it was not the little 
conspiracies with Sister Cecilia, the steady incitement 
towards one goal, that told with the girl. It was the 
belief in her own ugliness which set her as a thing 
apart. Love and marriage were not for her. She waa 
not of the same world as the beautiful heroines of her 
story-books, the more exquisite creatures whom she 
saw through the enchanted eyes of her poets. Earthly 
love was not for her, who hardly dared lift her eyes to 
a man’s face lest she should see the distaste in it. But 
Heavenly Love held out its arms to her, and did not 
avert its face. 


88 


JULIA 


She was an ardent and impassioned girl, capable of 
the raptures and the aridities of the mystical life. She 
had the lives of the saints at her finger-ends, and had 
thrilled to the heavenly ecstasies of St, Teresa, who 
was the dearest of her saints. 

The robe of the nun — the trailing, mysterious black, 
the white linen bands, that make a transparent frame 
for faces which keep the secret of perpetual youth — 
fascinated her, not a whit the less that she had been 
familiar with them all her short life. Nearly all nuns 
are beautiful. There is nothing, apparently, like the 
life of contemplation for washing the face with May- 
dew, bathing the eyes with euphrasy. The soft voices 
of the nuns, the swish of their robes as they walked 
the dim corridors, stirred the fount of poetry in the 
girl’s heart. The nuns were always like the inhabi- 
tants of another world to her, although they could be 
very human at times ; although the likes and dislikes, 
the little secret feuds, existed within the Convent, even 
if they could not be pursued ; and although her special 
friend. Sister Cecilia, liked a bit of gossip as well as 
any one, and was aware of such small matters as that 
Lord Kilmacreddan’s daughter was wearing a new 
frock at Mass on Sunday and that Mary Murphy had 
begun to dye her hair. 

Julia would always make her own illusions; and 
the Convent beckoned to her none the less sweetly 


WITHOUT THE PRECINCTS 89 

because she knew the nuns to be women behind their 
habits. 

By this time Mortimer O’Kavanagh had made 
friends with Father John O’Driscoll, and had found the 
man of the world as well as the saint under the faded 
cassock of the priest. Father John had lived and 
suffered in the world, had done everything but sinned 
— one could not associate that with him — before he 
had become a priest; and he was the most broad- 
minded of men, the most tender with human frailties. 

He must have been starved intellectually during 
those years in which he had been first curate and then 
parish priest of the parish of Ballinamore. To be sure, 
his room was walled in books from floor to ceiling. 
He was reading the Eevice des Deux Mondes, walking 
up the mountain side, the first day he and O’Kava- 
nagh made friends. 

His chairs were so heaped with reviews and maga- 
zine’s that he had to sweep a couple of them clear 
before he could ask O’Kavanagh, whom he had invited 
to come home with him for a chat, to sit down. 

Yes,” he said, answering a remark of his visitor’s ; 
“ I read a great deal. I get these things ” — indicating 
the reviews — some by the kindness of friends, others 
when the libraries are done with them. I have a 
hunger for knowledge on me. Sometimes I have 
looked it in the face, and asked it whether it was a 


90 


JULIA 


thing a poor priest with a big, scattered parish could 
entertain. It isn’t as if I were out in the world and 
must be abreast of modern thought. I shall never be 
in the world now. But I think perhaps the good God, 
when he gave me my weapons, meant me to keep them 
bright. I think so ; I hope I am right in thinking so.” 

« Why, surely,” said O’Kavanagh ; “ God didn’t give 
us minds so that we should let them rust.” 

As his acquaintance with the priest grew fuller and 
warmer, becoming friendship indeed, he was struck 
more and more with the keen edge of Father O’Dris- 
coll’s mind — as though he had been in perpetual contact 
with the world. He had noticed that even very intelli- 
gent and bookish people away from the centre of 
things are apt to be quite ignorant of what the world 
is thinking and doing, while the dweller in London or 
in Paris may lead a hermit’s life and yet be in the 
full knowledge of things, if his interests go in that 
way. 

But there was nothing of the provincial about 
Father John. There was something on the surface of 
his mind that sucked in knowledge, greedily, from 
likely and unlikely sources. O’Kavanagh smiled, re- 
membering the crass ignorance of the outside world in 
which some of his Oxford tutors, men of world-wide 
fame in the department of pure learning, had enwrapped 
themselves. What a contrast with this priest, in his 


WITHOUT THE PKECINCTS 91 

remote Ultima Thule, cut ofiP by reason of his religion 
and profession from the society of the gentler class ! 

For the gulf between them and the Catholics is 
the last gulf over which the Irish Protestants will 
consent to throw a drawbridge. And for this reason 
O’Kavanagh’s intimacy with the priest caused amaze- 
ment in the minds of the Catholics and some dislike 
and indignation among his peers. 

Even Mary Craven, that ardent Irishwoman by 
adoption, was scandalized. She and Jim Dacre — Jim 
was always her escort, no matter how they quarrelled 
— met the pair in earnest conversation one day. 

“How very odd,” said Mary Craven, “that Mr. 
O’Kavanagh should choose to be friends with . . . 
the priest ! ” 

She made a little pause before she mentioned 
Father John’s profession, and brought it out with a jerk 
much as though she had said . . . the Evil One. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” said Jim. “I like the priest’s 
looks. I should like to make friends with him. Id 
fact, I am thinking of asking O’Kavanagh to introduce 
me to him.” 

She turned an eye of cold amazement on him. 
“ One never knows where one will find you English 
people,” she said. “I confess I don’t understand you.” 

“And we don’t understand you: isn’t that your 
complaint ? Well, then, we’re quits. Miss Mary.” 


92 


JULIA 


“ It’s a quite different kind of misunderstanding,” 
said Miss Craven, loftily. 

She had it in her mind that the English misunder- 
standing was the result of stupidity, whereas the Irish 
was the result of superiority. Her listener understood 
her quite as well as if she had spoken her thought, and 
grinned to himself appreciatively. 

Come now,” he said, why shouldn’t we be friends 
with the priest if he’s a gentleman and a good fellow, 
as I am pretty sure this priest is ? ” 

''Oh,” said Miss Craven, "we Irish have long 
memories. We remember Scullabogue Barn and the 
Bridge of Wexford. Did you ever hear of them ? ” 

" I believe I did. O’Kavanagh mentioned the other 
day that some of your Catholic retainers were burnt in 
the Barn for refusing to leave their Protestant masters 
and mistresses. I thought it a most interesting thing.” 

"I believe our cook, Kate, and our parlourmaid, 
Bridget, would do the same to-day,” said Miss Craven, 
going off at a tangent, as her sex is apt to do. " We’ve 
had Kate thirty years and Bridget twenty-eight. They 
are quite members of the family.” 

" I see,” said Jim, thoughtfully, " it is the Catholic 
religion in its official capacity which you detest.” 

" I can’t imagine being friends with the priest when 
there is Mr. Lorimer.” 

Mr. Lorimer was the rector of Ballinamore, an 


WITHOUT THE PRECINCTS 93 

amiable, scholarly man with a good, charitable, narrow- 
minded wife. 

'‘Lorimer confided to me the other day that he 
liked the priest extremely, and wished he could see 
more of him ; only he is deterred by his wife.” 

“Very sensible of Mrs. Lorimer, I’m sure. Not 
that I agree with her in most things. But if you want 
to be friends with the clergy, why not Mr. Lorimer ? ” 

“ Come now. Lorimer can’t do for me what the 
priest can.” Jim was half serious, half jesting. “ If I 
were brought home on a hurdle to-morrow because of 
following your lead, I should call out for the priest to 
forgive me my sins. Lorimer can’t do that, can he ? ” 

“ He makes no such pretensions,” said Miss Craven, 
with her head in the air. 

“ Ah well, the sooner he][does, then, the better. It’s 
extraordinary how the idea appeals to human nature.” 

“ I wonder what your father would say if he heard 
you ! ” 

“ He would be bewildered. You see, the pater has 
never had any sins to be forgiven.” 

“ Your mother ? ” 

“ Oh ! I shouldn’t like to answer for the mater. I 
should never be surprised at anything the mater 
would do.” 

Meanwhile the subjects of their conversation were 
engrossed in so intimate and friendly a discussion that 


94 


JULIA 


they had forgotten Miss Craven and Mr. Dacre as soon 
as they had passed. 

“ I confess/' Father John was saying, that I should 
like more work to do.” He swung his arms about as 
though he were engaged in violent physical exercise ; 
then let them fall again with a certain air of dejection. 
“ There’s really very little to do here. The people are 
primitive and innocent ; the vices of civilization do not 
reach us ; occasionally there is a crime that startles us, 
the result of drunkenness, or primitive passions, or 
primitive ignorance. But, as a rule, a cure of souls in 
a parish like this is almost a sinecure. I wish I had 
an Irish slum to look after in Liverpool or Glasgow or 
London. I was reading in the ‘ Life of Father Dolling ’ 
the other day — ah, what a fine fellow that was ! ” 

He went on to speak of some ex^Dloit of that 
missionary hero, and O’Kavanagh listened with ever- 
increasing admiration for the priest’s great-heartedness 
and breadth of view. 

I am like a confessor to a convent,” he said, with 
a genial laugh that yet had something of pain behind 
it, and that is the least desirable of all positions for a 
priest who feels himself full of energy. I seem to be 
always forgiving venial sins. ‘ The Lord is a Man of 
War ;* there is a ring about that I have always liked. 
I wish it had been His will to put me in the fighting 
ranks.” 


WITHOUT THE PKECINCTS 95 

He broke off with a little sigh, and then went on 
again. 

By the way, there is a reception at the Convent on 
Easter Tuesday. Would you like to come with me ? 

‘‘ If you think a heretic may, I should love to.” 

“Let us ask Eeverend Mother. We pass the 
Convent on our way home. I am sure you will be 
very welcome.” 

The idea of a convent appealed to O’Kavanagh, as it 
does to most imaginative persons of his sex, especially 
those to whom, since they profess another religion, it is 
of the deepest mystery. He felt himself thriUed as 
Father John pulled the great iron bell-pull, and the 
peal clanged beyond the stout oak doors under their 
pointed arch of stone. The Convent was built of stone, 
and designed by an ambitious architect in love with 
Gothic, so that its aspect was severely ecclesiastical 
However, the climbing plants, the roses and honey- 
suckle, jasmine and clematis, which covered it up to 
the steep roof, had given it a softness and venerableness 
not otherwise its appanage. 

Immediately after the bell had sounded there came 
a patter of feet, the swish of a robe within ; a little 
grille was unshuttered, and a bright demure eye peeped 
out and immediately withdrew. Then the door was 
opened, and a little nun stood back in the shadow of it. 

“Ah, Sister Martha,” said Father John, “I have 


96 


JULIA 


brought Mr. Mortimer O’Kavanagh of Moyle to see 
Keverend Mother. I hope she is not engaged.” 

She will not be engaged for you, Father,” said the 
little nun in the softest of voices. will let her 
know at once.” 

She preceded them, with downbent head, and the 
same little clop-clopping of broad-soled, low-heeled 
shoes along the tiled corridor, which was really a 
covered-in cloister running round a grassy enclosure. 

The windows were open this mild day of February, 
and there was a great clamour of courting birds out- 
side, undeterred from their love-making by the fact 
that they were within the Convent’s precincts. A 
sweet smell of violets or violet-roots came in by the 
open windows ; around a statue in the corridor there 
was a stand of hyacinths in glasses, breathing a most 
honeyed sweetness. 

At a door beyond the statue Sister Martha paused, 
and, opening it, motioned them to enter. 

The room was as bare as a convent parlour usually 
is, but like all the house it breathed the convent air. 
The arched window, like all the other windows, had 
leaded diamond panes, and was filled in at the top with 
stained glass. The brown woodwork of the door and 
wall-panels was polished to perfection, as was the 
stained floor. There were a few pious pictures ; some 
horsehair chairs of angular severity; on the round 


WITHOUT THE PRECINCTS 97 

table a blotter and writing materials ; over the mantel- 
helf a large Crucifix. 

"‘It is like dropping into the Middle Ages,” said 
O’Kavanagh. 

“ Indeed ; one often finds the Middle Ages in a 
convent,” answered the priest, with a twinkle in his eye. 

The door opened to admit the Eeverend Mother and 
another nun, who was introduced as Sister Cecilia. 
The Eeverend Mother had a short face, with a colour of 
milk and roses, very bright, shrewd, capable, brown 
eyes, a humorous mouth with a flash of white teeth, 
and a shower of freckles upon the rose and white that 
gave her a fresh, open-air look. 

She was quite a notable woman, this Eeverend 
Mother, and had founded more houses for her Order 
than any other nun living ; so that she was always on 
the move, and having served her three years as 
Eeverend Mother in one convent, was sure to be moved 
on to make a fresh foundation in another place. 

She was a keen woman of business, before whose 
eye builders, plumbers, carpenters, and all such persons 
were apt to quail, and curtail their long estimates. 

She welcomed O’Kavanagh with effusion. Hadn’t 
Sir Jasper given them a site for a school-house ? And 
wasn’t the Community praying for him every day, for 
him and his ? With her hand on his coat-sleeve she 
called the young man ''Child” in absent-minded 

H 


98 


JULIA 


kindliness — absent-minded because her thoughts ran on 
a house, a derelict great house in a neighbouring county 
which she desired to secure for a novitiate for the 
Order. 

“Mr. won’t give it to us for less than ten 

thousand pounds,” she said ; “ and by hook or by crook 
we can’t raise more than six. But I’ve great hopes, for 
we are making a novena to St. Joseph. He’s always 
ready to help.” 

“ Oh, you’ll bring Mr. to his knees, or St. 

Joseph will,” laughed the priest. “ It is a good thing, 
Eeverend Mother, that other people haven’t your 
methods and your advantages, or what would become of 
the property-market ? Think what an advantage you 
have over the ordinary man of business.” 

“ Friends at Court, I call them,” said the Eeverend 
Mother. “ Why shouldn’t we make use of them when 
we have them ? ” 

“Mr. O’KaVanagh will be thinking you unscru- 
pulous.” 

“He won’t when he sees what the poor nuns* 
prayers will do for him and his. Will you now, 
dear ? ” 

She laid a soft, plump hand, with the wedding-ring 
on the third finger, on his coat-sleeve, and he knew not 
whether to be more amazed or delighted. Was it mere 
childishness or was it heavenly wisdom ? 


WITHOUT THE PKECINCTS 


99 


You must tell Mr. O’Kavanagli some time of how 
you got Carrigroe Park from the Quakers for one of 
your convents.” 

“That was a job/’ Eeverend Mother said, lifting 
her eyes and hands. ‘‘We had to convert the whole 
family — not that they stood much in need of conver- 
sion, God bless them/. But, you see, Carrigroe was a 
white elephant to them, and yet they wouldn’t sell it 
to be a convent. And so I just said to the nuns, 

‘ We’ve got to bring them over ; and it is twice as 
hard a job, because they’re so good already. I’d rather 
deal with sinners any day.’ However, we did it ; St. 
Joseph did it. And Abigail Fayle is Eeverend Mother 
of Carrigroe this minute.” 

“ And you’re going to be Mother Provincial, I hear,” 
said Father John, in a tone of raillery ; “ and Cecilia 
here is to be Eeverend Mother.” 

“ Oh, I hope not,” said Sister Cecilia, whose exqui- 
site profile, firm as the moulding of a white lily, 
O’Kavanagh had been admiring. 

“ You’d have to take it and be a good child if it 
were to come to you,” said the Mother, in tones of 
motherly rating. 

“ I didn’t bring you Mr. O’Kavanagh only to look 
at,” said the priest, glancing at his watch. “ He would 
like to see the reception on Easter Tuesday, Eeverend 
Mother, and wouldn’t take my word that he’d be 


100 


JULIA 


welcome, so I brought him round that you might 
assure him yourself.” 

^'Why, to be sure,” said the Eeverend Mother, 
cordially. “ To be sure, you’ll be as welcome as flowers 
in May. And you’ve never seen a reception, Mr. 
O’Kavanagh, dear ? And you’d like to see one ? Why, 
to be sure, we’ll be delighted.” 

They did not leave the Convent, however, till they 
had tasted some of a delicious conserve of oranges, and 
sipped some precious golden liqueur, sent to the nuns 
from a foreign convent of the Order. This was after 
they had inspected the new silver lamp in the chapel, 
and the vestments on which the nuns and some of 
their pupils were employed. 

O’Kavanagh noticed that the nuns did not taste 
the delicacies themselves, although they pressed them 
on their guests. 

Indeed, then,” said the Reverend Mother, they 
wouldn’t suit me at all. I find potatoes and milk the 
grandest things to work upon. Meat — why I haven’t 
eaten meat these thirty years! But sure, Mother 
Imelda has me dreadfully spoilt. ’Tis an egg I must 
have with my tea, no less. Oh, indeed, I’m getting a 
great glutton altogether.” 


CHAPTEE IX 


THE MOTHER 

It had been a whim of Helen Grace’s to call her pretty 
house Lacklands. To be sure, the house sat squarely 
in the middle of the estate, which was a very small 
one, yet had pretensions, with its lodge and entrance- 
gates, its carriage-sweep, its terrace at the back, its 
couple of greenhouses, its garden and orchard, its shady 
walk, which ran all round the high walls that en- 
closed it. 

It was really a very little house, just big enough, 
when they came to it, to house Lady Grace and her 
two small daughters. 

She thought she had been heartbroken after her 
husband’s death. She had fled to Lacklands from 
scenes which, being associated with him she had lost, 
she found intolerable. Her old friend. Sir James 
Langley, had discovered Lacklands for her. She knew 
herself that in the place associated with her lost Vernon 


102 


JULIA 


slie could not begin to live again ; and she must live 
for the sake of his children. 

Gradually Lacklands brought her healing. It was 
a charming place, easily made homelike, ready to take 
on the alluring, comfortable aspects of home for a 
woman like Helen Grace. It had all manner of 
delightful things within its gay, although circum- 
scribed, borders. 

The house, a white, long, low cottage ornky looked 
to the mountains, and had the adornment of green 
outside shutters, long out of use, but giving it a very 
pleasant aspect. The rooms were large and airy, with 
small-paned windows finished with a half-circle at 
the top. Her pretty, old-fashioned furniture quite 
sufficed for it. It was a house that lent itself to 
austere furnishing; and when she and Jane, her 
trusted servant, who was also the children’s nurse, had 
finished hanging the chintz curtains and putting up 
the pictures, and setting out all the pretty, quaint 
things which she had accumulated in the course of 
her not very long life, it was delightfully homelike, 
as Sir James felt, coming in and sitting down in a 
deep chair that was luxuriously restful. 

“ There’s not a chair at Foxcote that hasn’t broken 
springs,” he said, looking at Helen Grace, and feeling 
great inward satisfaction at the roses that were spring- 
ing newly in her cheeks. They were wild roses, unlike 


THE MOTHER 


103 


the damask roses of her little daughters, but they were 
fresh and fair ; and a few days ago the cheeks had yet 
been cold and wan. 

‘‘You must very often occupy that chair,” Lady 
Grace said, with a glance from her beautiful grey eyes 
that made the old bachelor’s heart beat faster. 

He had known Vernon Grace, and had estimated 
him, as his male acquaintances had usually done, at 
his true value — a handsome, brilliant, selfish fellow. 
What business had he to run horses and bet, to be 
known at the kursaals and casinos of the continent, 
while he had the seeds of a deadly disease within him, 
and was to leave his widow and children ill-provided 
for? 

His wife’s estimate of him was very different. It 
had made Sir James fidget once to see how the widow 
held her dead rake, “ enskied, ensainted.” But he had 
put away his impatience with deep contempt for him- 
self that he should have felt it. Women like Helen 
needed their illusions, and he would be a brute who 
would tear down their tender veils. There had been 
years during which Sir James, who had been in love 
with Helen before ever she saw Vernon Grace, had 
had hopes that one day his patient waiting might be 
rewarded. But she had never given him the chance 
to speak ; and now he was an old man, and had long 
learned content with things as they were. 


104 


JULIA 


Men like Vernon Grace often evoke and exact a 
devotion not given to deserving people. And as he 
was, so were his daughters. They were lovely babies, 
round-limbed, velvet-skinned, richly coloured as a 
Holy Child of Murillo. There was no sign in them 
of the malady that had lurked insidiously behind their 
father’s Southern tints and infectious gaiety. There 
never should be any sign, if maternal love and care 
could banish it, Helen Grace had said to herself. 

It was because the children must have the best 
chance for health that she left the old friends and the 
old life completely behind her. She had not so dropped 
out during her short married life that people had for- 
gotten her. In addition to her delicate beauty, she 
had gifts and graces of the mind and the heart which 
would have made her dear and welcome to many 
people who had resented the isolation in which her 
husband left her during those lonely years of child- 
bearing. 

But she had thought of nothing except to give the 
children the best chance possible. 

“ Bring them up in the country and the open air,” 
said Sir John Wardell, of Merrion Square, a prophet 
crying in the wilderness before the open-air treatment 
had sprung upon the world, ‘^and in all probability 
there will never be any trouble with them.” 

He had it in his mind that if Vernon Grace had 


THE MOTHEK 


105 


lived with any circumspection, he need not have left a 
young widow ; but that thought he kept to himself. 

And what place could be better adapted for fresh- 
air treatment than the mild Kerry highlands ? 

Let them run barefoot and bareheaded/’ he said. 

Let them be out in all weathers. Don’t coddle them. 
My dear child, the great punishment of our first 
parents’ transgression was the infliction of clothes. 
That is the curse of Adam and Eve. If the human 
race had never worn clothes, the world would have had 
no need of physicians.” 

She obeyed him implicitly. She had only to look 
at the barefoot, ragged cabin children to see the 
wisdom of his words. Their faces might be grimed 
with dirt; below it there were the azure eyes, the 
exquisite skin, of perfectly healthy childhood. The 
children grew into straight, tall saplings of men and 
women, gay in spite of poverty, unencumbered by the 
heaviness of spirit that comes to the eater of much 
flesh. 

I am inclined to add to the curse of clothes,” she 
wrote to Sir John, reporting on the extreme satisfac- 
toriness of the children’s health, ‘*thQ curse of meat. 
But that was not Eve’s fault. Perhaps the true secret 
of the apple tree of knowledge was that man should 
live on fruit and vegetables.” 

The children — it was always the children with her. 


106 


JULIA 


Perhaps they pushed Sir James away with more potent 
force than the dead man's shadow, since they were 
living and insistent, exacting the last farthing of the 
maternal tribute. 

Perhaps it was Helen Grace’s own fault that they 
grew up selfish — frankly, unrepentantly selfish, so that 
even the mother must needs acknowledge it. 

“ They think the world is made for them,” she said 
to Sir James ; and it is natural for young, beautiful 
things to think so.” 

But Jane put it in a cruder form, Jane was a 
black-haired, black-eyed woman of the people, who 
had reared the two children from their birth, and loved 
them with the half-savage passion of her kind. While 
they were little she gave them all of the world they 
could grasp and she could supply, her only regret being 
that they were not boys, since to her mind the boy 
must always exact a completer surrender from the 
woman who bears and nurses him than the mere girl. 
When she remarked that she always thought of Khoda 
and Violet as though they were boys, it meant the last 
word of her love for them. Certainly no boy, were 
he ever so masterful, ever so determined, could have 
excelled Lady Grace’s twin babies in the possession 
of these qualities. 

But as the children grew to young womanhood, 
and had less need of her, Jane’s passion for them 


THE MOTHER 


107 


became chequered with resentment. She was like 
the animal whose young no longer needs it ; only, 
unlike the animal, she would never attain indifference. 
And they had but to come back coaxingly to her when 
they wanted anything done for them, and her passion 
would return in a full wave. She loved them without 
illusions ; the mother would always have illusions and 
extenuations till the day she died. 

‘‘Make no mistake about it,” Jane said, making a 
rough entry one day into the morning-room, where 
Lady Grace was trimming hats for her daughters; 
‘ they’d walk over me, over you too, for the matter of 
that, to reach any end of their own.” 

“Poor Jane,” the mother said to herself, “the 
children have been hurting her in some way. Young 
creatures are heedless.’* 

Then she began to think over the toilsome days 
and nights she and Jane had spent together when the 
children were little and ill ; and her heart would ache 
for the devoted nurse, who, beyond that common bond 
of love for the children, had nothing in common with 
her ; she 'would never have allowed herself to acknow- 
ledge that Jane’s character, rough, violent, of the earth 
and the people, was repellent to her own sensitive, 
tender nature. 

There was one other delight in her life besides the 
children, and that was her delight in her garden. 


108 


JULIA 


She never could induce Ehoda and Violet to share 
her tastes. Indeed, what these young women did, 
except seek assiduously whatever honey life might 
hold for them, was not apparent. They were frankly 
amazed that their mother could find anything to please 
her in messing about with wet earth ; in making her- 
self hideous in her heavy, serviceable garden-dress 
with its accompanying muddy brogues and clay- 
covered gauntlets, and that garden hat, which had 
borne all sorts of weathers and kept the traces of 
them. 

Gardening, according to Ehoda, who was the more 
sprightly of the twins, consisted in picking off cater- 
pillars and green-fiy, trapping earwigs, collecting slugs, 
and such unpalatable pursuits. 

If I wanted to make mud-pies,” she would say, 
“I should make them indoors, where it would be 
cleaner.” 

The mother only smiled at her daughters’ sallies. 
If they liked better to lie like kittens in velvet chairs 
before the fire, crimsoning their cheeks until they were 
cabbage instead of damask roses, they must please 
themselves. Eor her was the sweet smell of the newly 
turned clay, the sharp, heavenly sweet breath of violets, 
the aspects of the sky, the wind and the rain in her face, 
the airs of heather borne to her from the mountains. 

In that gentle semi-tropical climate the gardener 


THE MOTHER 


109 


was apt to be unduly rewarded according to the extent 
of his labours. Lady Grace made her garden a bowery, 
fertile place. The girls appreciated the flowery setting 
of their home, and the profusion of sweetness in which 
they lived. They had an epicurean enjoyment of the 
fresh vegetables and fruit with which the garden 
supplied them. But they hardly thought of praising 
their mother for the result of her labours. When, 
indeed, had they thanked or praised her for anything ? 
The sun shone and the air blew, and they lived and 
were warm. They did not think of these things as 
tangible benefits any more than they thought of their 
mother’s long years of devotion. 

She smiled at their belittling of her work, feeling 
that the work itself was its own reward. She had 
attained an almost perfect peace of mind which gave 
her an air of quiet gladness that lay like perpetual 
sunshine on her face. The old wound of her husband’s 
death had long been healed, although it had left a scar. 
The money had been enough for them after all. Since 
the chHdren no longer required Jane’s services, Jane 
had run the house, assisted by a barefoot peasant-girl, 
and had been faithful and vigilant according to her 
nature. The money had sufficed — had even accumu- 
lated a little. Now that the children were grown up 
and desired baU-gowns and pretty things generally, she 
need not disappoint them. 


110 


JULIA 


Jane looked on with a fierce kind of disapproval 
at the mother’s partitioning of her own belongings 
between her girls. Lady Grace had a stock of hand- 
some, old-fashioned jewellery, which she seldom wore. 
She had hardly gone anywhere since her residence at 
Lacklands. Ehoda and Violet shared the jewels almost 
to the last one, leaving her only one or two ornaments 
which they looked upon as too matronly to be becom- 
ing to their own young beauty. 

“ You give them too much,” Jane said, when they 
had carried off their spoils. I hope you, and I, too 
won’t live to repent it.” 

“You were always for giving them everything 
J ane,” her mistress reminded her, smiling. 

Jane went off muttering and shaking her head 
Jane was growing a Cassandra ; but the mother divined 
a sore-heartedness behind this new aspect of her, and 
forgave it. She could understand that Jane felt it 
hard to be done without. 

Besides Sir James Langley, Helen Grace had only 
one intimate friend — Mary Craven. The friendship 
had begun in the generous enthusiasm of a generous 
child for one much older than herself, one so graceful, 
so elegant, with so beautiful a face, such gentle, charm- 
ing manners. 

At first the friendship had come as a thing unasked, 
unsought, by the recipient; one had almost said. 


THE MOTHER 


111 


unwelcome, for, having the children, what did Helen 
Grace wish for more ? 

Mary was about sixteen when her devotion took 
tangible shape, and it had not altered or wavered in 
the slightest degree in the decade of years since then. 
She was some years older than the twins, and she had 
watched those charming young creatures* growth with 
a jealous interest for their mother’s sake, which made 
her pitilessly clear-eyed. She did not approve of them, 
and they did not approve of her. 

Oddly enough, they were all in a conspiracy to keep 
the fact of their mutual dislike from the mother ; and 
there never was any one so easily deceived. If the 
children and Mary had little to say to each other, little 
desire to meet and foregather, she explained it to herself 
by the difference in their ages. And, to be sure, Mary 
was older than her years, else she had never picked 
her, Helen Grace, for a friend. 

The friendship had become very sweet to her in 
time. She had been unconscious of needing a prop; 
but the faith and love of honest, clear-eyed Mary 
Craven were a prop. She realized now that there had 
been room in her life for such, although she had not 
discovered it before. 

She would have been amazed if she had known that 
an element in Mary’s love for her was a passionate 
pity. She would have asked what pity could be 


112 


JULIA 


possible for her, the mother of Ehoda and Violet. And 
Mary would have been the last one to answer her 
truly, for Mary’s love had taught her dissimulation. 
Lady Grace had no idea of the aspect in which her 
daughters were considered by her dearest friend. 

A chance phrase of James Langley’s had illumi- 
nated for Mary the character of Vernon Grace, who 
seemed to have bequeathed himself to liis daughters. 
About that time the new element came into Mary’s 
friendship, which touched her manner to her friend 
with passionate protection and pity. She had always 
been the one to love, said generous Mary; now she 
should know what it was to be loved. 

Many persons at this time misunderstood Mary’s 
attitude towards the Misses Grace. 

“ Exquisite children, aren’t they ? ” said Sir Patrick 
Lorimer to Mary, the first time he beheld Ehoda and 
Violet. ‘"And such sweet, simple manners. Doubt- 
less the lovely nature corresponds to the lovely face. 
Don’t you think so. Miss Craven ? ” 

‘‘ No,” said Mary, bluntly, to the amazement of the 
distinguished soldier. I have often found pretty girls 
to have the souls of cats.” 

And that speech left a quite erroneous impression 
regarding Miss Craven on the mind of Sir Patrick, 
who had been very favourably inclined towards her up 
to that moment. 


CHAPTER X 


THE BRIDE OF EARTH 

It was well known that O’Kavanagh of the Keep would 
have no great fortunes to give his daughters, and before 
now the girls had suffered one or two disillusionments 
when their swains had left them for richer girls. They 
had an odd way of taking these desertions, judged from 
a different standpoint. They were as accustomed as 
French girls to the idea of a marriage in which the dot 
counted for much. Very often, indeed, the dot availed 
the husband little, since he handed it on to portion his 
sister, whose husband handed it on in like manner, and 
so on, till the chain was broken by a bridegroom who 
had no sister to portion off ; but that was a rare case in 
this country of great families. So the desertion of the 
swain lowered him little in the eyes of the one deserted. 
Often enough his desertion was due to his family piety; 
and that was an unfortunate thing for the girl left, 
since a little indignation and contempt might have 
accomplished wonders towards a cure. 

I 


114 


JULIA 


When, however, Frank Dwyer, having dangled 
after Bella O’Kavanagh for more years than she liked 
to remember, transferred his allegiance, suddenly and 
passionately, to a little slip of a girl, just home from a 
convent school, the daughter of a poor widow, and with 
no more gold to her account than was in the long plait 
which hung down her back, there seemed to Bella no 
palliation at all for her late lover’s conduct. Bella had 
been sure of Frank, and had played fast and loose with 
him in a way that showed her security. It had always 
been an understood thing that they should marry some 
day ; but Bella had been in no hurry. Frank had a 
small and rather poor farm, out of which all his industry 
wrung inadequate return. The young woman had 
looked at her future, as she conceived it to be, with 
unblinking, matter-of-fact eyes, that saw no veils of 
rosy glamour lie over the hard truths. 

When I marry Frank,” she had said, openly, it’ll 
be marrying into hardship. I’m in no hurry to be 
milking the cows, and rearing the calves, and feeding 
the hent and pigs. I’d rather enjoy myself while I’m 
young.” 

Indeed, if the truth must be told, Bella had started 
several flirtations with better-endowed suitors than 
Frank, but they had come to nothing. Her relations 
with Frank were too well known ; and Bella at twenty- 
nine, for all her bloom and buxom flgure, had become 


THE BRIDE OF EARTH 


115 


to the minds of those about her, in the cruel words of 
the Irish peasant, “ a stale girl.” Presently she would 
be an ould has-been.” Spinsterhood has little honour 
among the Irish peasantry. 

It was at this moment of her supposititious waning, 
although, as a matter of fact, she was on the ascending 
scale of good looks, being one of those who, too over- 
blown in girlhood, acquire a certain opulent beauty 
when girlhood is passed, that Frank Dwyer forsook 
her for Eily O’ Carroll. 

He had met Eily at a wedding, had never left her 
chair aU day nor herself during the dance that followed. 
Little Eily had received his attentions with a shy 
perturbation that riveted his chains. 

“ I couldn’t help it,” he wrote honestly to Bella, in 
his large, unformed, boyish characters. “ The minute 
I set eyes on the little girl I knew she was the only one 
in the world for me. I never was good enough for you, 
dear Bella, and I ask you kindly to excuse me and 
forgive me for wasting your time. You’ll marry some 
one better than me, and be happier than I could have 
made you.” 

“Did you ever hear such nonsense?” asked Bella, 
with a hard laugh, as she handed the letter about to her 
curious sisters. “ I always knew he was a softy. To 
think of him taking a girl like that, with just the 
clothes she stands up in, and they not of much account ; 


116 


JULIA 


I'd have thought more of him if it was bettering himself 
he was. Much good love will do him when he has 
hunger in the house with him ! " 

It would be impossible to reproduce the acrid 
contempt with which Bella spoke the word “love.” 
The little god was indeed a discredited person in the 
circle in which she moved, and his intervention in a 
marriage an undesirable thing. Yet, hitherto, Bella, 
like her sisters, had been something of a rebel against 
these ideas. Perhaps so much the O’Kavanagh blood 
had done for them beyond their peers. 

Bella asked neither pity for herself nor indignation 
against the defaulter. If it affected the grandmother’s 
pride at all she showed no sign. Possibly it did not. 
And Denis O’Kavanagh, looking to her for his cue, 
found that enmity to Frank was not expected of him 
and was relieved. He and Frank’s father, Larry Dwyer, 
had been friends in youth ; he had liked Frank, and 
was glad that he might be at least neutral. 

“ He’ll pay for his foolishness one of these days,” 
Bella said, and went about with a high head and a 
raised colour, saying nothing of Frank after the first. 

Bella could have borne it better if he had deserted 
her for a rich girl. Then there would have been at 
least a quid pro quo that would have saved her self- 
respect. 

However, she sat in the chapel and heard the 


THE BRIDE OP EARTH 


117 


promise of marriage between Francis Dwyer and Eileen 
O’ Carroll published without a change of countenance. 
Malicious eyes derived no satisfaction from watching 
Bella’s face. With a courage inherited from the 
O’Kavanaghs she had put on her prettiest frock, her 
most becoming hat, that Sunday. No one should .say 
that she felt the foolish fellow’s leaving her. 

“ Much good he was to any one, indeed, with his 
hungry farm,” said Bella. 

There was one who looked on at Bella’s attitude 
with eyes of amazement, and even horror, and that was 
Julia. Was this what her sisters called love ? She 
remembered BeUa’s years of love-making with Frank 
Dwyer — her blushes, her simpers, her dressing up for 
him, which Julia had watched with a certain arrogant 
surprise — if one j 30 uld associate arrogance with J ulia — 
that love could assume such shapes, and for a person so 
unlike her dream-heroes as Frank Dwyer. His clumsily 
made clothes, his awkward manners, his rough hands 
and feet, his bright ties, were so many offences to Julia, 
although she could not help liking Frank’s soft dark 
face, in repose oddly tragical, at other times boyishly 
gay. 

But now she saw Frank in a different light altogether. 
Julia had made a world of her own, in which she 
entrenched herself against the terribly prosaic views of 
those about her — to whom love was a folly, and 


118 


JULIA 


marriage a business in which girls were handed over 
like cattle to the one who haggled the least over the 
bargain. Julia knew the things that happened, the 
rapacity of the strange bridegroom, the complaisance of 
the girl who knew that she would be rejected if some 
contemptible item of her endowment of money and 
goods was withheld, yet could give herself without 
repugnance. The thought turned Julia faint with 
horror. Such things happened every day. 

Now Frank Dwyer assumed a new aspect in her 
eyes. He, too, was a rebel against things intolerable. 
To him had come the chrism and the consecration of 
love — the glory and the dream. 

She amazed Frank Dwyer one day when they met 
face to face on the road — at a sharp turn where Frank 
had no time to turn aside to avoid her — by going up 
to him and holding out her hand. 

I wish you joy, Frank,” she said, with the colour 
rushing to her cheek. 

Poor Frank blushed hotly too. “ Thank you kindly, 
Julia,” he said humbly. “I was afraid none of ye 
would ever think well of me again. But sure, I 
couldn’t help it, Julia ; it had to be.” 

“I know,” said Julia, almost wringing his hand. 
“ I know very well how it was with you, Frank. I 
wish you and Eily great joy.” 

Then in the reaction from doing something so 


THE BRIDE OP EARTH 119 

opposed to her habits of timidity and self-distrust, 
J ulia faii’ly ran away from him. 

“And I was thinking her an ugly little yeUow 
thing aU those years,” said Frank, remorsefully. “ But, 
upon my word, there’s a change in Julia.” Some of the 
change was in his own eyes, but he never thought of 
that. “ I’m thinking, maybe, Julia will turn out the 
beauty after all. God bless her, anyhow, for her 
kindness.” 

Frank had felt very much the altered regard in 
which the O’Kavanagh family must hold him ; so Julia’s 
action had been very comforting. Meanwhile he had 
given Julia a modern instance to set beside her dreams 
of romance, and Julia was grateful to him. 

It gave her courage to plead his cause with her 
grandmother, who was a little formidable, even to 
Julia. 

She plucked at her sleeve as the two sat alone in 
the big kitchen, and in a roundabout way told her what 
she had done. A twinkle came into the old woman’s 
eyes which J ulia did not perceive, for she had her own 
nervously cast down. A softness succeeded the twinkle. 

“ I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Ju,” she said. 
“ Why, you were never friends with Frank ; and to go 
against your sister like that ! ” 

“Bella doesn’t care,” said Julia, with odd bitter- 
ness. “ Bella doesn’t know how to care. She and the 


120 


JULIA 


other girls think that any love that is in it is only 
tittering and getting red and making quarrels and 
making up again and kissing.” 

‘'And what is it, Ju?” asked the grandmother, 
with a little irony in her voice. 

Julia could not see the tenderness in her eyes. 

“ I don’t know,” said Julia, looking in her lap. 
“ Frank knows. Only it isn’t that. And he was so 
glad when I spoke. I could see that he was very glad.” 

“ I wouldn’t be talking to Bella about it,” said the 
grandmother ; “ at least, not until Bella has got a new 
bachelor.” 

It had not been so terrible after all, thought Julia. 
Her grandmother had not been angry with her. She 
did not think that her grandmother regarded Frank as 
a very serious offender. To be sure. Gran did not often 
take other people’s views. She had lived differently, 
thought differently. She had read a good deal of 
poetr}^, even if the inspiration of it was mainly patriotic 
and not of love. J ulia’s experience was that one could 
not go very far in poetry without coming on love. Her 
grandmother must, at least — not like those others — be 
aware of how love was regarded in the greater world, 
and what great things had been accomplished in its 
name. 

There was some extenuation for the step that Bella 
took presently, in the fact that her sisters, after Frank’s 


THE BRIDE OF EARTH 


121 


desertion, began to press unpleasantly near her privi- 
leges. Bella had insisted on those privileges, and had 
had a disproportionately large share of whatever gaieties 
and other good things were going. Her sisters had 
borne it more or less patiently, in the belief that pre- 
sently she would marry Frank, and be out of their 
way. 

But now — she was not going to marry Frank ; she 
was not going to marry any one ; she was twenty-nine, 
getting on for thirty ; and there were four girls behind 
her — Julia did not count, as she claimed no privileges, 
and was therefore popular with her sisters — all of 
marriageable age. She had had her day. 

Bella read the thought in her sisters’ new demands 
and new impatience. The shadow of old maid already 
lay upon her. She was to get out of the way of the 
younger ones ; to efface herself. Well, they would see I 

There was that Peter Finegan, the uncle of Joe, an 
old crabbed bachelor whose face was the very colour of 
gold. He was reputed to be worth a great deal of 
money — an incredible amount any one would say who 
had only seen the low-browed village shop where the 
money was made. But that would be a person unac- 
quainted with the fortunes made in such unlikely 
places, and the ramifications which such businesses 
take. Peter Finegan was shopkeeper, farmer, grazier, 
seedsman, horse-dealer ; beyond all, and above all, he 


122 


JULIA 


was money-lender. It was whispered about among 
the neighbours that Peter Pinegan was worth sixty 
thousand pounds, an incredible sum, but by no means 
a record one. 

Anyhow, whatever Peter's hoard was, he was loth 
to leave it to his sister, Bridget Quinlan, whom he 
detested; and Joe Quinlan, whom, if possible, he 
detested still more. Not that the two, who for a long 
time had rested in the security of being his residuary 
legatees, did anything to excite this hatred. Far from 
it. They were too attentive, too deferential ; of late 
years Joe had paraded his relationship with “ Uncle 
Peter ” a good deal, coming in and hanging about the 
shop at a time when his relative could very well have 
dispensed with his society. Indeed, it took Joe’s com- 
fortably thick cuticle to endure the old man’s flings 
and jeers when he condescended to speak at all. But 
Joe was not dismayed. Once his uncle had detected 
him in the act of sending a facetious wink towards a 
shop assistant, one of those in whose manner Peter had 
thought he observed an obsequious deference, as to the 
heir of sixty thousand. 

It was the day following that indiscretion of Joe’s 
that Frank Dwyer was called ” in chapel, and Bella 
O’Kavanagh appeared in all her war-paint to give the 
lie to those who gaid she was deserted and forsaken. 

Peter had heard all about it across the counter. 


THE BKIDE OF EABTH 


123 


where he heard all the news that was going. He was 
not so absorbed in counting his guineas that he had 
not an old-maidish interest in the petty gossip of the 
neighbourhood. He was as willing as any one to be 
amused by Bella’s humiliation if she had displayed it. 

He, like two-thirds of the congregation, looked 
towards her slyly at the moment of the announcement. 
Hitherto he had taken no special notice of Bella, 
would have found her indistinguishable from her 
sisters. How, Bella was wearing a white felt hat with 
a sweeping white feather. Her dress was pale blue. 
When she had gone to Tralee to buy her own and her 
sisters’ winter frocks, that blue dress had made an 
alarming hole in the allowance. Her sisters could 
never look at it without chagrin, so greatly had their 
own glories been curtailed to make it possible. 

She was holding her head high, and her fringe was 
curled in golden rings down to her eyelids. Her 
downy skin, with a hint of gold in its fairness, was 
like the skin of a peach. She had a fine figure — a 
swelling bust, and a waist too small to be in propor- 
tion ; but then Ballinamore did not go by classical 
standards of beauty. 

Peter leant forward with his old chin in his hand, 
prepared to cackle internally if the girl winced. In- 
stead she looked straight at him, and the fiash of her 
blue eyes scorched him momentarily. 


124 


JULIA 


He drove home, muttering to himself as he sat 
holding the reins on the side of his disreputable outside 
car. Bridget Quinlan and her son Joe should never 
have his money. He wasn't old — seventy-two next 
December — and he came of a long-lived family. Why 
shouldn't he have a son to turn out the Quinlans ? 
J oe had winked, had he, at Corney Hagerty ? Corney 
should go ; he was getting too big for his boots. And 
Joe, that playboy, would laugh at the wrong side of 
his mouth. The laugh would be all on Peter's side 
presently. 

He had no objection to the old ways, so he sent an 
intermediary, a farmer deep in his debt, and so likely 
to do the best he could for him, to the girl's father. 

Denis listened civilly, suggested consulting his 
mother, and put off the intermediary for a few 
hours. 

Mrs. O'Kavanagh listened with that inscrutable 
smile of hers to her son's astounding communication. 

Isn't he a great old villain ? " he said, ‘‘ to be 
thinking of marrying at his time of life, and cheating 
poor Joe out of the money, too. It's no use bringing 
Bella into it, the poor child. Still and all, I don't 
want to offend Peter. There's that hundred and fifty, 
let alone interest. I’d find it hard to spare it with 
the crops in the ground. But how am I to tell Peter 
civilly that's it’s no use ? ” 


THE BEIDE OF EAKTH 125 

“I’d ask Bella. Peter is worth sixty thousand 
pounds, they say.” 

Her son looked at her in bewilderment. “ I never 
knew you to set much store by money. You jumped 
down my throat when I talked of J oe.” 

“That was another matter; that was Julia. Let 
Bella say for herself if she’ll refuse sixty thousand 
pounds. She won’t thank us maybe if we do it for her.” 

Bella was brought into consultation. There was 
never any doubt in Bella’s mind from the beginning. 
There was the hard tangible fact of the money. If the 
bridegroom was a difficult pill to swallow, she kept 
that fact to herself. 

“I’ll put a very different way of going on him,” 
she said. Poor Bella! She had no idea of Peter’s 
granite hardness, which was not likely to succumb to 
any young woman. “ I’ll live in a fine house. There’s 
Graylands; every one knows that Graylands belongs 
to Peter Finegan ; that there isn’t a stick or stone of 
it isn’t mortgaged to him. I’ll drive in my carriage ; 
none of his dirty old outside cars for me. And I’ll 
make him sell the shop. Maybe we’ll go to live in 
Dublin. Then it’ll be seen who was civil to me and 
who was not. I’ll have Ju to stay with me. . . .” 

She looked round with a flashing eye on the guilty 
countenances of her sisters. But Julia, whom she had 
selected for honour, had fled away. 


126 


JULIA 


The emissary returned, and came again, accom- 
panied by his principal. For several hours the haggling 
went on over Bella’s portion. If Peter Finegan was 
worth sixty thousand, he was not inclined to abate a 
single jot of his demands. The money, the cows and 
calves, the pigs and sheep, the feather-beds and house- 
hold materials, down to the Dorking hen with her 
clutch of thirteen, on which Peter’s greedy eyes had 
fallen as he entered the house through the farmyard : 
he would have all. 

At the Dorking hen, Mrs. O’Kavanagh, who had 
not spoken hitherto, interfered. 

You can’t have the Dorking hen, Mr. Finegan,” 
she said; ''she belongs to Julia. And it’s no use 
saying you’ll have another one instead, for they belong 
to me. In fact, there’s nothing else you can have, so 
I think we may take it that the match is made.” 

Peter Finegan lifted his little cunning red eyes to 
meet her handsome grey ones. They looked at each 
other steadily for an instant. Then Peter fidgeted, and 
his eyes sank. To be sure, he was glutted with his 
exactions. He thought contemptuously of Denis as a 
very soft person. 

" Then I’ll speak to the priest,” he said ; " and we’ll 
fix it for Easter Monday. The shop would have to be 
shut that day anyhow.” 

During these negotiations sensitive Julia was in a 


THE BRIDE OF EARTH 


127 


state of horror, as one witnessing the preparations for 
an execution. Of late Bella had singled her out for 
favour by way of accentuating the disfavour in which 
she held those bold, encroaching hussies, her other 
sisters. And Julia was not one to look at affection in 
any doubting way. 

She made one wild appeal to Bella not to go on 
with the marriage. Bella pushed her away awkwardly. 
The family had never been accustomed to offer each 
other caresses. 

“You were always a fool, Julia,” she said; “al- 
though a good-natured fool — 111 say that for you — and 
not like some I could name. But I’m quite happy, 
and youll see the fine time I’ll be giving you when 
I’ve the spending of Peter’s money.” 

Whether Bella meant to hint at her prospective 
widowhood or not, Julia did not ask. The cynical 
thought of Bella as a young widow with the spending 
of the old man’s money had been in all the con- 
gratulations of the neighbours and had not always gone 
unspoken. 

Julia left her sister quietly; in her mind Bella was 
like a lamb led to the most horrible shambles, the 
more horrible, to Julia’s mind, from being but dimly 
apprehended. The shame and horror of it had entered 
into Julia’s soul by proxy. 

“Never mind,” said the grandmother, discovering 


128 


JULIA 


Julia in paroxysms of tears for her sister’s sake, and 
perhaps also for the wounding of her own ideals. 
“ Bella doesn’t feel it like that. Don’t think about it, 
J u. Think of the reception at the Convent on Easter 
Tuesday. That’ll he the day after Bella’s wedding. 
You’ll see how happy the new nun will be. Why, if 
I had ten daughters, I think I’d give them all to the 
Convent.” 


CHAPTER XI 


THE BRIDE OF HEAVEN 

The wedding of Easter Monday was over. It had 
been a quiet wedding — “ nothing to rejoice over/' said 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh — and Bella was a wife before Frank 
Dwyer could get his little farmhouse into order to 
receive its mistress, which fact was a source of much 
gratification to the bride. 

There had been a small but very good wedding- 
breakfast for the priest and his assistant priests, the 
family, and the solitary guest, Mortimer O’Kavanagh. 
O’Kavanagh had asked that he might be present, and 
had sent a piece of silver as a wedding gift, which was 
a great source of pride to Bella, while the bridegroom 
handled it and turned it about, looking as though he 
would like to bite it, as he had done with a coin many 
a time, to test its genuineness. 

If Mrs. O’Kavanagh had had the remotest idea of 
how Julia felt about Mr. Murty’s presence, she might 


130 


JULIA 


not perhaps have consented to it. Julia’s shame in 
the marriage was not lessened because the bride bore 
herself gallantly, even triumphantly. She was carrying 
the bridegroom off to London for the honeymoon. He 
had suggested Killarney, as being near at hand and 
cheaper, but Bella had received the suggestion with 
discordant laughter. She had been to Killarney, and 
had come upon honeymooning couples in secluded 
places, straying hand-in-hand. She had no desire for 
those sylvan solitudes in old Peter’s company, if, in- 
deed, she would have had in any company, for what- 
ever sentimentality Bella indulged in in unmarried 
days, would be left outside the door of married life. 
The bridegroom was discontented even on his wedding 
day. The marriage fees had been heavy, and there 
was this tom-fool business of going to London, with 
endless expense, and the shop left to his thieving 
assistants for a whole fortnight. After all, he could 
have disappointed Bridget Quinlan and her precious 
son just as well by leaving all his money to endow 
churches and hospitals. 

Julia, in her bridesmaid’s dress of yellowish India 
muslin, with a yellow sash about her slender waist, 
did not dare lift her eyes to O’Kavanagh — slender and 
elegant in his Poole-made clothes, with a gardenia in 
his button-hole — while the nuptials were in progress 
which, she said passionately to herself, were shameful. 


THE BEIDE OF HEAYEN 131 

not to be purged by the blessings of the priests, since 
they sinned against the God of Nature. 

She was still and pale, but to the young man's 
eyes more beautiful for the brooding storm in her 
eyes and on her sweet lips which had taken so stern 
a line. 

He was amazed at the marriage himself, but he 
knew that such marriages were far from being un- 
common. He supposed it was in the blood to get used 
to them, to endure them without over-much repug- 
nance. Sometimes, he knew. Nature did take her 
revenges. He had heard of cases in which young girls, 
married to old men while they were yet children, had 
died of the horror of it. But, as a rule, the made 
marriages worked well enough, as they do in France. 
Perhaps the percentage of unhappy marriages was no 
greater than in cases where sentiment had been allowed 
to have its way. 

His presence gratified old Peter — won him a little 
out of his moroseness. He wouldn't have cared, since 
he did not provide the feast, if a good many more 
neighbours had been present ; but, after all, there was 
something in Mr. Murty's being the only guest except 
the priests. Mr. Murty proposed handsomely the 
toast of the host and hostess, saying that he claimed it 
as a privilege because of their common O'Kavanagh 
blood. And at that old Peter, bridled, well-pleased, 


132 


JULIA 


began to reconsider his grudging thoughts about the 
expense of his marriage. 

Easter was late that year, and Easter Tuesday was 
full of the voices of the spring. A soft, south-west 
wind, with placid clouds, ruffled the young grasses, 
and sent shadows wandering over the mountain side. 
The lambs were bleating and the cuckoo calling ; every 
mossy bank was pale with primroses; the plum and 
pear trees were all in bridal white ; the apple boughs 
were faintly pink. The dappled yellow and brown of 
the wallflowers showed in masses by the convent 
walls. 

The pretty church was full of the sun, that lay in 
golden streams, with now and again a patch of purple 
or crimson, on the tiled floor. The long wooden 
benches were fairly filled — the nuns were nothing if 
not hospitable — and a reception at the convent was 
one of the social events among the Catholics about. 

There was a perceptible flutter when Eather John 
walked up the aisle with Mr. O’Kavanagh of Moyle 
beside him, and ushered him into the seat where 
O’Kavanaghs of the Keep were kneeling or sitting in 
a long row, before going on into the vestry to robe 
himself for the ceremony of the day. 

It was pretty well known by this time that O’Kava- 
nagh of Moyle was on friendly terms with his humbler 
namesakes, and even insisted on the relationship ; and 


THE BRIDE OF HEAVEN 133 

this was regarded by the neighbours as a somewhat 
undesirable state of things. 

“Sir Jasper would never have done it/^ said 
one. 

“iNo, indeed/’ said another. “Sir Jasper was 
always a very proud gentleman, and knew his place, 
although he could be neighbourly with any one.” 

“ ’Tis the English drop in this one,” said a third. 
“You can never tell what those Englishers will be 
doing.” 

It is to be feared that O’Kavanagh’s presence on 
this occasion was a cause of distraction to some of 
the younger women, whose eyes strayed from their 
prayer-books to look at Sir Jasper’s heir where he 
knelt in the front seat by old Mrs. O’Kavanagh. He 
was so afraid of seeming lacking in reverence that he 
did not sit till she whispered into his ear that he 
might do so. 

He was quite unconscious of the interest he excited. 
His whole thoughts, indeed, were absorbed in the 
ceremony, which seemed to him almost intolerably 
pathetic and beautiful. 

He held his breath when the bride of no earthly 
bridegroom came from the nun’s choir to her strange 
and lonely nuptials. His imagination lent the Bride 
of Heaven a beauty she did not really possess; and 
while he followed the details of the ceremony he felt 


134 


JULIA 


his heart throb painfully at the sight of mysteries he 
felt to he beyond him. 

In her white satin wedding-dress, her head covered 
with a veil of real lace — the best is not grudged in the 
wedding outfit of the nun, since it comes afterwards to 
the service of the altar — the big innocent country girl, 
with her masses of black hair, her brown eyes and white 
teeth and rosy cheeks, took on an unearthly beauty to 
the imaginative young man. He thought he had never 
seen anything so beautiful and so sad as the giving of 
this young beauty to the invisible Bridegroom. 

When the great coil of her silky-black hair was 
cut through and fell to the ground ; when the robe of 
the nun, the strait coif and veil of the nun, were flung 
over her bridal glories, and she lay face downward 
for a few seconds before returning to that Convent 
tiring- chamber, where the Sisters who had clad her for 
the wedding would clothe her for the convent, his heart 
echoed the sobs of the comfortable woman in a neigh- 
bouring seat, who was the new nun's mother. 

The mere natural man in him was wrung with what 
appealed to his pity — he had not the key to these 
things — while something beyond, supernatural and 
spiritual, rose to the spiritual heights of the sacrifice. 

He felt bewildered by what he had seen, and would 
have knelt on when the bride had retired and the 
altar-boys were extinguishing the lights, despite the 


THE BRIDE OF HEAVEN 135 

bustle of departure all about him, if Mrs. O’Kavanagh 
had not touched his arm. 

He turned with a start then, and rose to his feet. 
As the elder O’Kavanagh girls filed past him, with 
eyes and thoughts plainly set upon recognizing this and 
that acquaintance in the throng, his eyes met Julia’s 
eyes. For once she forgot to be shy and lower them. 
They had the exaltation, the rapture, of the eyes of a 
bride. 

As he stood waiting for her to pass, an odd appre- 
hension made him suddenly turn cold and shiver. Why 
did Julia look at him in that impersonal way, as 
though the world did not hold him for her ? He felt 
disturbed and uncomfortable as he walked out of the 
church by Mrs. O’Kavanagh and into the Convent, in 
the refectory of which the feast was spread. 

It was a new thing to O’Kavanagh that nuns have 
a tradition of good cooking. Most Irish communities 
will number among their lay-sisters one who has 
served an apprenticeship to a pastry-cook, and two or 
three who have been cooks. There is nearly always 
a French nun ; and the Convent wHl serve you rolls 
and coffee such as you shall not know out of France. 

The rolls and coffee were here for those who liked 
them, but the table was spread with more substantial 
things. Hams and beef and roast fowl masked them- 
selves under a brown glaze with a piping of pink and 


136 


JULIA 


white that consorted gaily with the cutlet and ham 
frills. The tables groaned beneath jellies and creams 
and tarts and all manner of sweet things. There were 
wines in plenty, and even whisky, if one preferred it ; 
and there were teetotal drinks for those who were not 
satisfied with tea and coffee. 

O’Kavanagh found himself at the principal table 
with the priests and the new nun’s relatives. Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh was beside him, but the younger branches 
had been swept away to other tables. It was in vain 
that his eyes looked for Julia. 

The bride’s parents were of the farming class. The 
father, a typical square-jawed, red-faced, black-headed 
man, clean-shaven ; the mother, a commonplace matron, 
her face beaming with pride, although she had so lately 
been weeping, turning this way and that to speak to 
one and another, till all the jet bugles on her cloak 
winked and nodded, and the black sequins on her 
bonnet were like a dim aureole as they caught the sun 
through the long, open windows. 

The Eeverend Mother came up and put her plump 
hand on O’Kavanagh’s shoulder, as though he had been 
a schoolboy. 

“ And have you nothing to eat at all ? ” she asked, 
in the caressing Irish way. “ Sister Angela, what are 
you going to get for Mr. O’Kavanagh ? Sure we have 
him starved. What’s that you’ve got ? Koast fowl 


THE BKIDE OF HEAVEN 


137 


and ham ? Would you like that, Mr. O’Kavanagh, 
dear ? Or a little bit of beef ? Gentlemen always like 
beef. A slice of beef as well, please. Sister Angela. 
And Mrs. O’Kavanagh, dear ! Has no one asked you 
if you have a mouth on you ? ” 

She kept her hand on O’Kavanagh’s shoulder while 
she made her hospitable inquiries to one or another. 
Her kindness, her gentle intimacy, were delightful to 
him, the more delightful that she must be always so 
remote. He remembered her phrase, “ When I was in 
the world.” 

The nuns were doing all the serving. O’Kavanagh 
had made an effort to assist them, but had quickly 
been put back in his chair by a bustling, laughing 
little nun. Why, they were like children ; they were 
delightful. They flew from one to another, helping 
their guests to food, pouring out wine for them, pressing 
on them this, that, and the other thing, with the most 
lavish and charming hospitality. 

O’Kavanagh had thought that a cup of coffee and a 
roll would suffice for him, since it was his pious custom 
never to omit lunch with Sir Jasper. Sir Jasper had 
plucked up wonderfully since the heir came home, and, 
to the young fellow’s joy, promised to keep him out of 
his kingdom for some time to come. 

But the fallen face of Sister Angela made him 
change his mind. 


138 


JULIA 


^‘What?’* she said blankly. '‘Coffee and a roll! 
Sure that’s no food for young people. How do you 
ever expect to be strong and well ? ” 

He could not resist asking her for what age she 
took him. 

“ I don’t know, indeed,” she said merrily ; “ but 
whatever age you are you don’t look it. And you’ll 
never be any great age if you make your lunch on 
coffee and a roll.” 

So O’Kavanagh made up his mind to eat two lunches 
and, accepting the well-filled plate from her hand, was 
rewarded by Sister Angela’s smiles. 

“ They feed every one but themselves,” said Father 
John to him across the table. “They’re good cooks 
thrown away, unless on an occasion like this or when 
they give me breakfast after Mass. It’s surprising the 
appetizing smells there are when they’re cooking their 
own dinners, but if you investigate you’ll find it’s 
nothing but macaroni.” 

“How don’t be slandering us. Father John,” said 
Sister Angela, running away with her little nut-brown 
face wrinkled in smiles. 

But who was this cheerful-looking person standing 
by the new nun’s father and mother, accepting with 
a broad smile of pleasure felicitations and congratu- 
lations ? Why, it was the new nun, apparently very 
proud of her new attire, and evincing as yet no 


THE BRIDE OF HEAVEN 139 

discomfort from the stiffly starched coif, which at first 
must be an instrument of torture. 

O’Kavanagh smiled at his emotion of a little while 
before. How wasted that pity had been ! The glamour 
had fallen away from the veiled bride so far as to 
reveal the buxom peasant-girl, with her wide mouth 
and light brown eyes and very commonplace expression. 
It was plain that she was enjoying her prominence of 
to-day as a bride of earth might. 

He remembered the wedding of yesterday, and 
thought how pity was wasted on the bride of to-day 
when one thought of that other. To-day's bride was 
radiantly happy, although one might suppose her in- 
capable of spiritual exaltation. “ Blessed is the faith,’* 
he thought to himself, '' that can move such mountains.’* 


CHAPTER XII 


THE KNIGHT ERKANT 

Julia was looking thin since her sister’s wedding-day. 
She had not much flesh to spare, and went quickly to 
skin and bone. Even her poets failed to comfort 
her. 

Her grandmother was troubled and would have had 
Julia to sleep in her room so that she might watch over 
her ; but Julia pleaded hard to be allowed to keep her 
turret, and in the end the old woman consented. 

One night, something in the way Mr. Murty looked 
at Julia as he sat contentedly smoking his pipe in the 
chimney-corner, gave Julia’s grandmother a sudden, 
sharp shock of revelation. If any one had noticed 
they might have seen her draw herself up, alert, 
watchful; but no one noticed. The other girls were 
not present. Denis was talking farmer’s talk, which 
seemed to interest Mr. Murty. The talk was slow- 
dropping, came at intervals ; it was evidence of how 
far the intimacy between Mr. Murty and the 


THE KNIGHT ERRANT 141 

O’Kavanaglis had advanced that none tried to quicken 
the desultory talk. 

Julia was darning a hole in a fine, exquisite old 
table-cloth. Her delicate brows were knitted over her 
task. She had her head inclined towards the lamplight, 
the better to get the light on her work. Her face was 
in shadow, but the light brought out the bronze gleams 
in the darkness of her hair. 

The glance her grandmother sent in Julia’s direction 
told her nothing. O’Kavanagh, unaware of being 
observed, continued to gaze at Julia — a quiet, deep 
gaze, at once impassioned and content. That night, 
after the girls were in bed, Mrs. O’Kavanagh sat up 
while Denis O’Kavanagh smoked his last pipe. 

I’m thinking,” she said, in a quiet, deliberate voice, 
'' that it’s time you gave Mr. Murty a hint not to be so 
much about the place.” 

Denis stared, and his mother had to repeat the 
speech. 

‘‘ What for ? ” asked Denis, in a dazed way. ‘"No 
one could be more pleasant and humble and at home 
than Mr. Murty. Sure I’ve heard you say so yourself. 
Why should I be for showing him the door ? ” 

“ Did you ever ask yourself, Denis O’Kavanagh, for 
why Mr. Murty should be coming about the place so 
much ? Isn’t there plenty of his own kind for him ? 
What have we to give that Quality hasn’t 1 ” 


142 


JULIA 


Denis stared at her and blinked. 

“ Why, to be sure, I thought he liked the chat, and 
your own old stories that he never seemed to tire of 
listening to. Sure what else would he be coming 
for?" 

“ I can’t call you a fool," the mother said, with the 
mildness, characteristic of her, that was more impressive 
than anger in another, seeing that I was a fool myself. 
Denis, my son, it’s Julia that brings Mr. Murty here ; 
you and I never counted at all, nor the old blood, nor 
what he called the kin between us. At least, not after 
the first ; I think it did count at the first, and that he 
came to see us in honest friendship. I’ve nothing to 
say against the boy. Only, I ask you, Denis 
O’Kavanagh, is O’Kavanagh of Moyle likely to marry 
our Julia ? ’’ 

The man looked at her in a helpless way, and his 
jaw dropped. 

I suppose not," he said slowly. “ I never saw 
him take much notice of Julia, nor she of him. You’re 
not fancying it, mother ? " 

“ When did you know me to fancy things, Denis, 
my son ? I’ve seen what I’ve seen in Mr. Murty’s 
face. I don’t know about Julia. I only hope she 
hasn’t thought of him, ITothing good comes from 
people leaving their own class and mixing with 
another." 


THE KNIGHT ERRANT 143 

I’ve heard you say that w^’ve cause to hold our 
heads higher than O’Kavanaghs of Moyle.” 

“ So we have. ’Tis yourself knows it, Denis. I’m 
not saying a word against Mr. Murty. If I hadn’t 
thought weU of him, and very weU, he’d never have 
been in and out here so much. Perhaps he doesn’t 
know where he’s drifting to. Perhaps he doesn’t know 
how much unhappiness he might bring on the little 
girl. Anyhow, supposing he was to be wiUing to marry 
her ? Would it be for her happiness ? Wouldn’t she be 
lonely and lost among the Quality ladies ? What would 
the world say of us that we opened our doors to Sir 
Jasper’s heir and married him to Julia O’Kavanagh ? ” 

“ I didn’t think you thought so much of what the 
world said,” retorted Denis, with a certain dignity. 
^‘And if it was that Mr. Murty was that fond of Julia 
that he’d take her as she is, and that she was fond of 
him, would we have any right to be standing in the 
way ? ” 

“I suppose it’s a man’s way to be foolish,” Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh said, with scornful patience. "‘When 
Julia was little you’d always give her the thing she 
wanted, whether it was good for her or not. It was 
well you had me. It was well that Julia was one not 
to ask for much, to take ‘ NTo ’ for an answer when it 
was said to her.” 

You don’t think Julia cares ? ” the father said. 


144 JULIA 

with a sudden flash of alarm. '^She isn’t like the 
other girls. ...” 

“ I don’t think Julia cares. I think it is with Julia 
that she’s a bit sick of the world — after Bella.” 

It was the evening following this conversation that 
Julia, tying up the Crusader’s rose-tree in the Abbey, 
heard the clang of the little gate outside, followed by 
the entrance of some one. She looked round with a 
little leap of her heart. All Julia’s expectations went 
one way in those days ; but it was not the figure she 
expected to see that darkened the pointed doorway of 
the Abbey. It was some one burlier, coarser, more 
swaggering; it was, in fact, her distant cousin, Joe 
Quinlan. 

Julia had not seen Joe, except at a distance, since 
the hasty match-making between Bella and Peter 
Finegan. Bridget Quinlan had written a letter to 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh, the tenor of which her grandchildren 
guessed at from the recipient’s contemptuous smile as 
she deposited it in the reddest part of the fire. 

‘‘ Is Bridget very angry ? ” Denis had asked, with a 
perturbed look ; there was no one more peaceful than 
Denis. ‘‘ Sure it must be a disappointment for her, 
the poor woman ! ” 

‘‘There are some people whose insults are more 
complimentary than their friendship,” Mrs. O’Kavanagh 
answered, her expression regaining its normal calm. 


THE KNIGHT EKKANT 


145 


Julia looked in some alarm as she recognized Joe 
Quinlan. “Oh, come you in peace, or come you in 
war ? '' was the question in her mind ; and she hardly 
knew whether Joe’s friendship or enmity was the more 
desirable. 

He soon set her doubts at rest. 

“ I thought I’d find you here, Julia,” he said, ex- 
tending a horny hand to her, “ though what attraction 
there is for a pretty girl among these old bones it’s 
myself doesn’t know. ’Tis a wonder you wouldn’t be 
afraid.” 

Julia put her hand in his hastily. 

“ You see, they’re O’Kavanaghs, Joe,” she said. 

A little spot of red had come into her cheeks at his 
address. It was the second time he had called her a 
pretty girl. Was he mocking her, or what foolishness 
was on his eyes and tongue ? However, a curious fear 
of him prompted that hasty hand-shake and the half- 
apologetic answer. 

“ Sure I don’t care whether they’re O’Kavanaghs or 
not,” said Joe, holding her hand tightly. “I think 
myself that it’s all one when we’re dead. One parcel 
of old bones is no better than another. The great thing 
is while you’re alive to get all you can in the world, to 
best your neighbour, and to make anything you covet 
your own.” 

At this setting forth of Joe’s creed, Julia’s flesh 

L 


146 


JULIA 


absolutely crept with repulsion. She lifted her shrink- 
ing eyes to his face while she tried to withdraw her 
hand from his tight clasp. She knew very little of 
drunkenness, since her father was the most temperate 
of men, and she had left her home hardly at all. But 
the foolish self-satisfaction on Joe’s face, the thickness 
of his voice, the muddiness of his eyes, told their own 
story, even if they were not assisted by the rank smell 
of bad whisky, which was his atmosphere. 

^‘Let me go, please, Joe,” she said, shrinking from 
him ; you make me afraid.” 

Something came into his eyes which she found more 
dreadful than before, and his clasp of her hand tightened. 
His face came a little nearer to hers, and his hot breath 
turned her faint. 

Oh, let me go,” she said ; you don’t know what 
you are doing.” 

Joe was not offended at this. ‘‘ You mean I’ve 
been taking a drop,” he said. ‘"And sure if I have, 
Julia, you ought to be the last one in the world 
to blame me. It was a very low thing for your 
sister Bella to do, to go and marry an old man like 
my uncle, Peter Finegan, and take the money from 
his lawful nephew. And me counting on it ever 
since I was a gorsoon. Indeed, if I wasn’t the kindest 
of men, ’tisn’c talking to you I’d be now, Julia 
O’Kavanagh.” 


THE KNIGHT ERRANT 147 

To J ulia’s consternation lie wiped away a tear with 
the back of his disengaged hand. 

’Tis ever and always what I was — too forgiving,” 
he said, in maudlin admiration of himself. “ My mother, 
she has no word too bad for ye. But I said to her, 
' Go easy, ma’am, go easy. Isn’t it Julia O’Kavanagh 
I’ll be bringing home to you for a daughter-in-law ? I 
don’t care,’ says I, ‘ not if they’re all the robbers you 
say. I’ve had my eye on the little girl this long time 
back, and if Denis O’Kavanagh can only give her a 
smaller fortune than I’m entitled to, sure may be Peter 
Finegan would be adding a bit.’ Kot that it’s like 
what the old miser would do, but I thought I’d be 
pleasing her. She thinks she’ll still rule the roost 
when I bring the wife home, but if you’ll stand up to 
her, Julia, my girl. I’ll back you up. Oh dear, oh dear, 
I’m the most injured man in Christendom ! ” 

He swayed a little, and Julia looked about her for 
an opening for retreat. 

^‘Let me go, Joe,” she said. ^‘My grandmother 
will be frightened, missing me so long.” 

The quiet field outside smiled in the placid evening 
sunshine. It represented a heaven of unattainable peace 
and safety to poor Julia. If she were once out there ! 
Why, she would not be even afraid of the little Kerry 
bull, who was in a field which she must cross if she 
made a straight flight for home. Julia could not 


148 


JULIA 


imagine anything she would be afraid of as compared 
with her terror of Joe in his present mood. 

“ The grandmother ! said Joe, nodding his foolish 
head sagely. ‘‘An old consequence, that's what the 
mother calls her. Sure it isn’t thinking of grand- 
mothers you’d be with a husband in prospect. Come, 
give me a kiss, Julia. ’Ti's a hundred I’ll be taking 
now I’ve the chance.” 

Julia uttered a wild cry that rang over the lonely 
fields and startled the Kerry bull at his quiet browsing. 
She pushed off Joe Quinlan, her hand flat upon his 
abhorred mouth, with the great red moustache and 
prominent white teeth. But Joe was not to be baffled 
like that. He had got his arm round her. He began 
to be angry, and the more determined because he was 
angry. 

After the first cry Julia put all her energy into the 
unequal struggle. She was crying out voicelessly on 
Heaven to save her from the degradation of Joe Quin- 
lan’s kiss. How her sisters would have laughed at her \ 
She felt that if Joe Quinlan succeeded in kissing her 
she would die of shame. The dragon’s mouth would 
have seemed to her a desirable alternative. 

Suddenly something happened — what was it ? For 
an instant Julia hardly knew. Joe had relaxed his 
hold and gone down like a log ; and Mr. Murty was 
standing beside her, pale, breathing fire and fury, his 


THE KNIGHT ERRANT 


149 


right hand clenched, and the muscles standing out 
like steel. 

“ What was he doing ? ” he asked. '' I heard you 
cry out. Good heavens, if I had not happened to be 
taking this way ! ” 

Julia’s eyes, uplifted to his, saw him like St. Michael. 
He looked down at her, breathing hard. 

“He has not frightened you very much,” he said. 
“ Who is he ? A tramp ? ” 

“ Oh no. . . . ” Julia was about to say that Joe 
was a cousin of hers, but some reticence held her back. 
“ It is only Joe Quinlan. I have always known him. 
He wouldn’t do me any harm, but he had taken drink, 
and he frightened me.” 

O’Kavanagh was holding both her hands. Her 
heart was fluttering so in her breast that she jerked 
out the sentences in a disconnected way. Her face 
shimmered pale in the gloom of the Abbey. The light 
in her eyes dazzled him. 

“ I shall take you home,” he said gently, “ and you 
must not come here again alone. I insist that you 
shall not.” 

They had quite forgotten the prostrate Joe, till Julia 
remembered him in a spasm of apprehension for 
O’Kavanagh rather than for him. 

“ You haven’t hurt him ? ” she said, looking down at 
the prostrate figure. 


150 


JULIA 


But no ; Joe was already coming to himself. Luckily 
he had fallen clear of the tombstones on the soft grass, 
and he was recovering from the effects of the blow under 
the chin which had toppled him over. He got up 
muttering darkly something about summoning his 
assailant, and went out without a glance at Julia. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE BANISHMENT 

There had to be some explanation when O'Kavanagh 
brought Julia home. She had been frightened by a 
drunken man in the Abbey, he said, leaving Julia to 
amplify the explanation when he was no longer there. 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh heard him in pale consternation. 
She was alone when they came in. 

'^I should never have let her go and come,” she 
said, as though in extenuation of a negligence of which 
he had not accused her, “but the place is so safe. 
Nothing ever happens here. Julia has always coma 
and gone alone. She has been a lonely child. No one 
has ever frightened her before.” 

“I am sure it is usually safe,” O’Kavanagh said. 
“ Still, she has promised me not to go there alone again,, 
at least, not of evenings. It is a lonely place.” 

That evening was not as others. Denis came in 
presently and welcomed his guest, and the two lit 
their pipes, and the desultory dropping talk went on 


152 


JULIA 


as of old. But Denis had plainly something on his 
mind. His eyes were absent; at times he fidgeted 
awkwardly ; his pipe would not draw. It was a relief 
when tea was ready, and the girls gathered to the 
board, chattering away among each other, unrestrained 
by O’Kavanagh’s presence. He had come so often that 
they had grown used to him, and discussed their affairs 
and interests before him with no trace of the early 
embarrassment, which had lasted a very short time 
indeed. 

Julia did not appear at tea. Her grandmother 
reported that she had a headache. Hobody seemed to 
bother about her absence so far as to require explana- 
tion except her father. 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh was moody during the meal. 
She had extracted from Julia the details of her en- 
counter with Joe Quinlan. As she listened to Julia's 
story, broken by sobs — even now the recalling of it 
made Julia shake with terror — many expressions passed 
over the fine old face. After all, what did Joe's be- 
haviour amount to ? A little rough love-making from 
a man excited by drink. The other girls would have 
known how to deal with such an one. How they 
would have laughed at Julia's repulsion as of the born 
vestal! A certain wintry humour came to her face. 
Still, Julia was Julia, her porcelain vessel, and no 
common clay. The expression became one of mingled 


THE BANISHMEKT 153 

pride and indignation. Joe Quinlan must be taught 
his place ; Julia was no common peasant-girl. 

That thought meant increasing anger. He had 
frightened the child. The angry tenderness in the 
old woman’s face as she bent over her darling in the 
twilight would have annihilated Joe Quinlan, if that 
were possible. Then — Mr. Murty had come as a 
deliverer. That was very unfortunate from Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh’s point of view. She tried to belittle 
what Mr. Murty had done, subtly. But perhaps the 
subtlety was not in her, for she only made Julia look 
at her in wondering incredulity. 

“ Oh no. Gran,” said Julia. Others would not 
have done it as well as Mr. Murty. Most people 
would have been afraid of Joe. When he got up and 
went away he looked ready to kill some one. All the 
foolishness had gone out of his face. I should not 
have liked to be left alone with Joe then. The great 
foolish omadhaun! Do you know. Gran, it was the 
second time he called me pretty. Perhaps he knew no 
better with the drink in him.” 

“Perhaps not,” assented Mrs. O’Kavanagh, with a 
return of the wintry smile. 

She brought Julia’s tea to her bedside, and after a 
time the girl was asleep in her high tower-room. 
After tea was over downstairs, Mrs. O’Kavanagh came 
back to assure herself that the girl really slept. She 


154 


JULIA 


was asleep, but lying with her soft hands clenched, and 
the terror of a dream in her face. 

The grandmother moved her a little, as she would 
have done a young child, smoothed her pillows, composed 
the bed-covering. Julia did not waken, but the frightened 
look passed away from her face, as though she felt the 
sense of comfort and protection even through her sleep. 

As Mrs. O’Kavanagh turned away, she caught sight 
of Julia's little brass-bound desk on the table. It was 
not locked ; Julia had no secrets to keep. The contents 
of the desk were mainly sheets of paper on which 
Julia had copied out poems that pleased her. Friend- 
ships she had none, except with Sister Cecilia at the 
Convent, and her she saw too often for there to be any 
necessity for letters between them. 

A sudden thought struck the old woman. Bridget 
Quinlan had written her an insulting letter. She had 
taken no notice of it. To accuse her of manoeuvring to 
bring about Bella’s marriage was so wide of the truth 
that it left her withers unwrung. Her nature was 
rather masculine than feminine. When she said that 
Bridget Quinlan could not insult her she had spoken 
truly. The coarse, shrewish insolence had disturbed 
her no more than the screaming of the gulls on the 
cliffs. “ What can you expect from a pig but a grunt ? ” 
she had asked, in the comprehensively contemptuous 
phrase of the Irish peasant. 


THE BANISHMENT 


155 


Kow she would go letter-writing herself. It would 
not have occurred to her but for the opportunity offered 
by Julia’s desk, her pen-tray, her box of note-paper and 
envelopes. 

She took up the first sheet to her hand — a pink, 
scented, foolish thing. As a matter of fact, the box 
had been Bella’s gift to Julia, and faithfully repre- 
sented Bella’s taste. There was a foolish little forget- 
me-not spray in the left-hand corner of the sheet. 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh had an incisive style in letter- 
writing as in speech. She had used it in the old days 
when she had corresponded with men who had helped 
to make Irish history. Kow, for a long time, she had 
laid aside her pen. Her letters in reference to chickens 
or calves, or household supplies or servants, could be 
written by her grandchildren. Only her exact accounts 
were kept by herself. 

She was very angry as she began writing. She 
wanted to tell Joe Quinlan what she thought of him 
for frightening Julia, to let him know that the door of 
the Keep was closed against him, to convey to his 
coarse mind that such a creature as Julia was not for 
him. 

As she went on, her pen carried her further than 
she intended. The old injury of the days when Denis 
had brought her Eosy Quinlan for a daughter-in-law 
was being revenged, as well as Joe’s misbehaviour. 


156 


JULIA 


When she had finished the letter it was a fine piece 
of stinging invective, wrapped up in dignified words 
and phrases. 

She read it over to herself with the war-horse light 
in her eyes, his passion in her dilated nostrils. She 
had enjoyed the writing. The only question was if it 
would pierce Joe’s thick hide. 

Meanwhile, the disturbance of old ways downstairs 
was so complete, so evident, that, without waiting for 
her return to the family circle, O’Kavanagh stood up 
and announced his intention of going. 

“ It gives Sir Jasper a quieter night,” he said, “ if 
I am with him before he goes asleep.” 

He’s come round wonderfully, glory be to God,” 
said Denis O’Kavanagh. I wouldn’t have given him 
the winter to live before you came, sir. Now I shouldn’t 
be surprised if you had him with you ten years.” 

Mr. Murty’s face brightened. 

“ ’Tisn’t every young gentleman,” said Denis to his 
mother afterwards, “ that ’ud like to hear it. Sure he 
makes a slave of himself to Sir Jasper, like as if he 
could never make up for staying away so long.” 

“ ’Tisn’t many young gentlemen are like Mr. 
Murty,” Mrs. O’Kavanagh replied, with an expression 
that was full of personal pride in the heir’s good 
qualities. 

“ It won’t be my fault if he doesn’t see his century,” 


THE BANISHMENT 


157 


Mr. Murty had responded heartily. ‘*Yon see, he’s 
the only relative, the only near relative, I have in the 
world. When a man has so few as I have, they’re apt 
to be precious.” 

“ True for you ! said Denis, with ready assent. 

“ He’s as hale as possible, only for his chest,” went 
on the young man. '^He has never quite recovered 
from the chill he took last autumn. If we get a May 
of east winds. Dr. Beatty thinks I shall have to take 
him abroad.” 

“ It’s likely you will, then,” said Denis, with his 
hand on the half-door opening into the yard. “ It was 
blowing up for it all day.” 

He walked with Mr. Murty down the rough, miry 
avenue to the gate that opened on to the boreen. They 
paused there, one inside, one outside the gate. They 
talked of some affairs of the farm. The heir was 
inclined to reward improving tenants rather than leave 
them to be rewarded by the results of the improve- 
ments, as Mr. Craven desired. He had his way, too ; 
although the agent protested that the result of Mr. 
O’Kavanagh’s method would be that the tenants on the 
other estates would be discontented, and that all the 
angry agents would be about him, Mr. Craven, like a 
hornet’s nest. 

“ Then tell them to go and do likewise,” had been 
the heir’s calm reply. 


158 


JULIA 


I tell you what, Mary,” Mr. Craven had said to 
his wife, after this tussle of wills, in which he had been 
worsted ; that young man’s as hard as nails under 
his quiet manner. He’s making me the laughing-stock 
of the country. Every day I’m on the point of asking 
him if he can’t dispense with an agent. I wish I’d 
kept Sir Jasper on my side. If only I hadn’t made 
the mistake of thinking the old man’s mind gone ! ” 

'' He has made a wonderful recovery,” said Mrs. 
Craven. 

“The young chap coddles him like a baby,” an- 
swered her husband. “ Beatty says he’s not so old at 
all — what’s eighty ? Only that the state he was in 
was due to loneliness. I think he’ll keep that tree of 
his a long time out of its job yet.” 

As the two men talked across the gate the dry 
east wind crept across the late April grasses, and 
made them shiver with a dream of the thirst to come. 

“ You’ve done a good bit of work in that ten-acre 
field,” said Mr. Murty. “ I’ve instructed Mr. Craven to 
hand you back ten pounds off the half-year’s rent for 
that bit of drainage and the fencing-in of the quarries.” 

“ You’re very good, sir,” said Denis, more than ever 
sensible of the difficulty of his task. 

“I met your bullocks coming home from Glen 
Fair,” said Mr. Murty again. “ They looked a pretty 
lot.” 


THE BANISHMENT 


159 


He was shaking the ashes out of his pipe by 
knocking it gently against the gate, preparatory to 
putting it into its case. It was the signal for farewell. 
It was time for Denis to speak. 

If you please, Mr. Murty,” he said, “ I think it 
would be as well if you didn’t come so much to the 
Keep.” 

O’Kavanagh turned dark red in the shelter of the 
darkness. 

“ Why ? ” he said, stammering. “ I’ve done nothing 
to offend you, I hope. I thought I was sure of my 
welcome. You always . . . Mrs. O’Kavanagh . . . 
and all . . . seemed glad to see me.” 

So we are, sir — so we are, indeed. I don’t think 
there’s any one herself thinks so well of. Kind and 
pleasant you always were, Mr. Murty, and just like 
one of ourselves. I don’t know what it will be 
like without your coming in of an evening. I said 
it to herself; and I could see by her face she didn’t 
like to think of it. She has a terrible respect for 
you.” 

Then why banish me ? ” asked O’Kavanagh, in 
bewilderment. 

“ ’Tis like this, sir : Quality ought* to go with 
Quality, and the commonality with the commonality. 
Kot that we’re common ” — the fine keen profile lifted 
itself to the dim light — but still, the old times are 


160 


JULIA 


gone by; and O’Kavanagbs of the Keep are not fit 
company for O’Kavanaghs of Moyle.’^ 

But why, Denis — why ? ” 

Mr. Murty in liis eagerness put his hand over 
Denis’s where it lay on the gate. 

“ I’ll tell you why, Denis. Because we sold our 
honour and our faith, and you kept yours unspotted 
and inviolate. Do you think I’ll take that excuse 
from you, Denis ? You must give me a better one. 
Haven’t I told you that I’m jealous of your ancestry ? ” 

The farmer shook his head, although his cheek had 
flushed at Mr. Murty’s generosity. 

There’s very few thinks like you, Mr. Murty. 
I shouldn’t have thought of it myself ; but the mother 
always thinks for me. She’s a wonderful wise old 
woman, you know. She thinks people will talk ; 
they’re always ready to talk. And, you see, sir, ours 
is the only house you’ve visited at — among the tenantry, 
I mean. It’s natural people should be jealous and 
talk.” 

Why ? You are of my kin. The others are not.” 

“ It is your kindness to say so. The other people 
don’t look at it like that.” 

“ Is the opinion of other people to break our friend- 
ship ? ” 

“ You see, Mr. Murty ” — Denis O’Kavanagh’s voice 
was suddenly constrained and shy — I have little 


THE BANISHMENT 


161 


girls. One can’t be too careful about little girls. I 
don’t know whether herself has heard anything . . . 
but — but, she thinks the world of you, sir; and it 
breaks our heart to be inhospitable. Sure we always 
kept the open door. And we thought a deal of your 
being so kind and friendly.” 

Mr. Murty reached out and took Denis O’Kava- 
nagh’s hand, and wrung it in the darkness. 

“ I am very sorry,” he said. I never thought of 
that. What brutes there are in the world ! Forgive 
me, Denis.” 

“ Nothing to forgive, Mr. Murty, sir. Only a deal 
of kindness to be remembered.” 

“ On my side, Denis.” 

He went away with fury in his heart against 
gossips and evil tongues. Even when he slept a sense 
of unpleasant happenings followed him in his dreams. 
What did those hateful tongue ascribes to him ? His 
mind turned in horror from the possible answer to his 
question. And what was he going to do with his 
evenings, the evenings he had spent at the Keep ? He 
could not go to Father John, who was often busy, three 
evenings in the week. And there was no one else 
upon whom he could drop in informally. Very often 
there was a long evening to be disposed of after Sir 
Jasper had gone to bed. Sir James Langley — perhaps. 
Craven ? Ho ; Craven would talk of nothing but business. 


M 


162 


JULIA 


He must cultivate the neighbours, he supposed. 
To be shut out from the Keep meant a considerable 
blank to him. He thought of it with consternation ; 
then put away the thought in humiliation and con- 
trition for the hateful things his thoughtlessness and 
their generosity had possibly brought upon his friends. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE SNOWBALL BEGINS TO ROLL 

He was not long in discovering that his intimacy of 
some months at the Keep had been the cause of much 
gossip among the neighbours. The information came 
to him from Father John, to whom, as to a professional 
receiver of private affairs, he imparted the worry and 
disturbance of his mind. 

“ I feared it,” said the priest ; “ but did not see 
how I could interfere. I trusted to Mrs. O’Kavanagffs 
excellent good sense to see when the friendship ought 
to cease, or, at least, to grow less. After all, it is only 
gossip that will die down, and it affects no one in 
particular — no one at all in particular. Fortunately, 
Denis has half a dozen fine girls.” 

‘‘ I looked on them as kin of mine,” fretted O’Kava- 
nagh ; '' and I had grown attached to Denis and his 
mother. I used to argue at the Union that breeding 
counted for little, circumstances and environment for 
much. I was wrong. Those two show that blood and 
breeding will out.” 


164 


JULIA 


You had the best of intentions/’ said Father 
John ; “ but, my dear child, the world is vulgar, even 
a little and primitive world like this. Oddly enough, 
though they disregard the sentimental element in their 
marriages altogether, there is no place where friendship 
between young people of different sexes is so little 
believed in as in Ireland. It is hard on you ; but Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh and Denis have done right. By the time 
you and Sir Jasper come back to us the little buzz of 
wonder and gossip will have died dbwn. Those things 
do die down when there is no foundation for them.” 

O’Kavanagh was glad to be going. His dismissal 
from the Keep hurt him less than that vulgar gossip 
should have misinterpreted his visits there. He felt 
rather sick of his newly found country, and carried the 
old man away to Algiers with a feeling of being glad 
to escape. 

The gossip had somehow spread from the country 
people to those of a higher station. The first to retail 
it to Mary Craven had been, indeed, Ehoda Grace, 
who was now engaged to Sir Patrick Lorimer, and 
carried her engagement with an air of insolence that 
impulsive Mary found hard to bear. There had been a 
moment when Miss Ehoda had played fast and loose 
with her elderly soldier, while sending innocent, 
alluring glances towards Mortimer O’Kavanagh. But 
O’Kavanagh had failed to see the glances, which were 


THE SNOWBALL BEGINS TO BOLL 165 


obvious enough to any one else except the two men 
most concerned; and now Khoda had ranged herself, 
and was to become Lady Lorimer in the autumn, and 
was the most discreet of beautiful children. 

“ What a pity,” said Ehoda, in her purring way, 
“ that Mr. O’Kavanagh is a person of low tastes.” 

“ How has he shown them ? ” asked Mary Craven, 
as ready for war as she dared to be, seeing how devoted 
she was to Khoda’s mother. 

Every one is talking about his intimacy with the 
family of that farmer, O’Kavanagh, who owns the 
queer old house with the square turret that you see as 
you ride towards Glensaggartmore. He has haunted 
the house all the winter. There are half a dozen 
coarsely handsome milkmaid daughters. I should have 
thought he might have had better taste.” 

“They are not all coarsely handsome milkmaids,” 
said Mary, with flashing eyes ; “ there is one who looks 
like a young princess — an Egyptian princess. Her 
face in the dark of her hair is like a little moon.” 

“ I don't know the Egyptian princess,” said Ehoda, 
languidly ; perhaps it is she, then.” 

Perhaps it is none of them,” said Mary. Papa 
has the greatest respect for those O’Kavanaghs : why 
shouldn’t Mr. O’Kavanagh be friends with them ? 
They are sprung from a common stock : why shouldn’t 
he visit them as his relatives ? ” 


166 


JULIA 


I wonder if Miss Grace, who keeps the shebeen in 
Tubbergort, is a relative of mine,” said Khoda, flip- 
pantly. 

“ I should think very probably,” Mary responded ; 
“ she’s a pretty old woman if she does keep a shebeen, 
and her manners are excellent — a reproach to some of 
us. If you want to get good manners in Ireland you 
have to reach the level of the people. There are no 
good manners among us settlers ; all we have acquired 
from the Celt is his malice: in our case it becomes 
more objectionable.” 

‘‘ So it does ; I never thought of that. But how 
generous of you to acknowledge it ! ” said Ehoda, 
sweetly. “ Of course, we are not settlers. At least, we 
have been here since Strongbow, and have had Irish 
foster-mothers, and all the rest of it.” 

In this game of fence with the buttons on Mary 
was no match for Ehoda. She felt it in her heart to 
be openly, savagely rude, but that she must not be. 
She had an apprehension of their dealing with their 
mother now that Ehoda and Violet were no longer 
dependent on her, that sometimes filled her with a 
blind rage, at others with a sheer terror for what might 
break her friend’s gentle heart. 

The apprehension took her by the throat and 
quelled her anger. 

“ Why do we always remain settlers ? ” she asked. 


THE SNOWBALL BEGINS TO BOLL 167 

turning away from the malice in Ehoda’s eye. We 
ought to know more about the people by whom we 
are surrounded. Why are we always like a garrison 
in a hostile country ? We take them for our servants, 
but no more. Mr. O’Kavanagh came among us with 
different ideas, because he was brought up in England. 
Why must he be a target for gossip because he has a 
mind more enlightened than ours ? Why must he and 
his friends suffer because he is less hidebound than we 
are?’’ 

“ You used to think that nothing good came out of 
England,” said Ehoda, enjoying herself highly. **Has 
Mr. Dacre been teaching you better ? ” 

Mary’s cheek flamed. There had been a period of 
strained relations between herself and Jim Dacre, 
during which Dacre had magnanimously devoted 
himself to Violet Grace, whose suitor had been 
in London for an examination in seamanship, on 
the result of which much depended. Violet, as was 
Violet’s way, had flaunted Jim as a captive to her bow 
and spear; had whispered in the ears of a dozen 
dearest friends, in Mary Craven’s ears, who was not a 
friend at all, that poor Mr. Dacre ... he had been 
so kind ... she liked him so thoroughly, and, of 
course, she took it for granted he knew how things 
were between her and Harry. Still . . . she was 
afraid she had been indiscreet in trusting to his good 


168 


JULIA 


sense. You could never be quite sure about men.’^ 
And so on, and so on. 

I should always be sure of Mr. Dacre's behaving 
like a gentleman,” Mary Craven had said, on the 
occasion of this confidence; and then had bitten her 
lip for the heat of her advocacy. 

Anyhow, Jim yielded up his guardianship to Harry 
Lorimer as soon as he returned, and certainly pre- 
sented no love- sick appearance. Indeed, his eyes wore 
an odd expression, half-amusement, half-impatience, 
when Violet was the subject of conversation; but he 
was silent about her, and that fact, at least, to Mary 
Craven's mind, seemed to give colour to Violet’s 
hints. It was otherwise with some of the dearest 
friends. 

“ To be sure, Mr. Dacre is the son of a rich peer,” 
said one of them, and Harry Lorimer is really rather 
a poor match for Violet. She seemed quite happy 
with Mr. Dacre for a substitute while Harry was 
away.” 

But these were precisely the kind of hints unlikely 
to reach Mary Craven’s ears. Mary had a way of 
tearing a spider’s web of scandal into a thousand 
pieces, demolishing with outspoken honesty what it 
had taken so much labour and skill to construct. 

She was so hot with indignation about Ehoda’s bit 
of scandal that she had to blurt out some of it to Jim 


THE SNOWBALL BEGINS TO BOLL 169 

Dacre, whom she happened to meet as she returned 
from Lacklands. He knew her in the distance, coming 
along with her graceful, free walk ; and if she could 
have seen his smile, she would, perhaps, have been 
kinder when they met. As it was, she greeted him 
somewhat shortly, and only nodded her assent to his 
request to be allowed to walk with her. 

‘‘ As a matter of fact,” he said, taking out his watch, 
“ I promised Mrs. Craven I’d find you and bring you 
home for lunch. We’ve just half an hour to get 
home in.” 

‘'Did yoUj* she asked, looking at him straight, 
“hear some gossip about Mr. O’Kavanagh’s visits to 
the O’Kavanaghs of the Keep? But of course you 
did. I have just been hearing it from Ehoda Grace.” 

He did not notice the implication, or, at least, did 
not take notice of it. 

“ His cousins ? ” he said. “ Yes ; he told me they 
were his cousins. People have said to me, quite a 
long time ago, that his intimacy there was an odd 
thing. Of course, there were the usual vulgar sug- 
gestions. So you have been hearing it. I was 
frightened of you, seeing you come along with that 
portentous frown. Why should it worry you? I 
should heed it no more than the buzzing of hornets.” 

He smiled down at her by his side. She had the 
bright, shining, new-bathed, fresh, and frank look that 


170 


JULIA 


delighted him, and he liked her none the less for the 
wrathful setting of her young brows. 

"‘Papa says they are the most honourable and 
high-minded people,” she said. *‘They hold their 
heads quite as high as any of us. And they have a 
better right. If their ancestor had not held fast to his 
faith and his country, they would be O’Kavanaghs of 
Moyle now. The O’Kavanagh who was loyal to the 
Queen, who turned his coat all round, received the 
title and estates. Myself, I would rather derive from 
Sir Eoderick, poor and with a price on his head till 
the day of his death.” 

'' And I,” said Jim, quietly. 

“ You would ? ” 

Her face cleared as she looked up at him. 

‘‘ I should have thought the practical Englishman 
would have forbidden your saying that.” 

“Why? We are not all practical. There's a deal 
of sentiment in us really; in fact, we are a more 
sentimental people than you are. Some of the senti- 
ment is true, and some false ; but the fact remains that 
we are a people of sentiment.” 

“ Perhaps,” said Mary, a little doubtfully, but with 
an intention of goodwill which made him smile. “ But 
— I don't know how far the gossip has gone ; yet one 
ought to put one's foot on it. I have been to the 
Keep with papa. I am going with him again. I want 


THE SNOWBALL BEGINS TO BOLL 171 

people to see that others besides Mr. O’Kavanagh can 
find those O’Kavanaghs interesting. I shall get the 
girls to join the Gaelic class which I hold weekly. 
There is one girl who interested me greatly — a slender, 
dark girl, quite unlike her sisters, who are a very 
ordinary sort.’* 

I know,” said Jim, quietly. I have seen her.” 

“ I want to make friends with her. The best way 
to give the lie to such gossip is to show that one may 
be attracted by a girl like Julia O’Kavanagh — yes, 
Julia was her name — without being a man.” 

It is very generous of you, very like you. But 
the girl struck me as being shy. You will probably 
only make her uncomfortable.” 

“ There you go, throwing cold water, as usual,” said 
Mary, indignantly. 

Only English common sense.” 

“ As though you had a monopoly of it ! ” 

“ Those people won’t thank us for patronizing 
them.” 

Who talked of patronage ? ” 

‘'ISTot you. . . .” He had almost said “dear.’* 
“ But they may think it is meant for that. As a 
matter of fact, the father interested me very much once 
or twice, when your father sent me there on business. 
So did his regal old mother. So did Miss J ulia. So 
did not her milkmaid sisters. But I had an idea they 


172 


JULIA 


would be chary of an unequal friendship. They 
received O’Kavanagh because he called them cousins, 
l^othing could have been better than the manner of 
the farmer and his mother to me. But I felt myself 
kept at an immense distance all the same.” 

Of course they are proud.” 

“As proud as O’Kavanagh himself. As a matter 
of fact, I asked O’Kavanagh if he would take me with 
him to the Keep on one of his many visits. It was 
after I had heard the first suggestion about his probable 
attraction there. I thought that the visits of two might 
offer less target for scandal than the visit of one.” 

Her eyes softened. “ That was . . . nice of you.” 

“ Oh, the place was very attractive to me, as a 
matter of fact. You see, even if they hadn’t been 
of what you call here ‘ancient ould high descent,’ I 
shouldn’t have minded. Some of the pleasantest people 
I’ve ever met have been Highland gillies and Alpine 
guides, and English gamekeepers and innkeepers, and 
Irish peasants of all sorts. I’m afraid I’m a rank 
socialist at heart.” 

“ What did Mr. O’Kavanagh say ? ” 

“ He answered, a little stiffly, that he would consult 
his cousins. He didn’t know me so well then as he 
did afterwards. However, he never spoke of the 
matter again, so I let it drop. I felt it would be an 
impertinence to have gone further.” 


THE SNOWBALL BEGINS TO BOLL 173 


Mary was looking at him very kindly by this time. 

However, a day or two later, her mother, who had 
had afternoon callers, heard a further aspect of the 
scandal, if scandal it might be called. She whispered 
it to Mary with bated breath, only too ready to believe 
the best of her world in this as in all else, and hopeful 
of reassurance from her daughter. 

“Mrs. Lorimer mentioned such an unpleasant 
rumour, Mary,” she said. “ They are saying that 
young O’Kavanagh has been visiting a great deal at 
the Keep this winter. He claimed the people as his 
cousins — a most quixotic thing to do. And of course 
people have talked — with all those girls. And they 
say the father asked Mr. O’Kavanagh his intentions 
and made himself very unpleasant. And so Mr. 
O’Kavanagh was very glad of the excuse of Sir J asper’s 
health to run away. It is all so unlike what your 
father thought of those O’Kavanaghs. Do you think 
it can he true, Mary ? ” 

Lies, lies ! ” said Mary. “ If you knew more about 
those O’Kavanaghs, mother, you wouldn’t need me to 
tell you. I’m surprised at Mrs. Lorimer listening to 
and spreading such stories.” 

*'I am relieved that you think so, Mary. Your 
father has such a high opinion of them.” 

‘‘ You must come and talk to old Mrs. O’Kavanagh ; 
then you will be as sure as I am. She is twice as 


174 


JULIA 


dignified as Lady Kilmacreddan. Of course youVe 
seen her; but you won't really know her till she 
talks. Papa has business over there sometimes. We 
will drive over with him, and wait while he goes 
with the farmer to see the cattle. She will give us 
delicious tea, and you will feel as though you were 
being received by a duchess." 

‘‘You go so fast, Mary," said Mrs. Craven, with 
her indulgent smile. 


CHAPTER XV 

DONNA QUIXOTE 

Mary Craven was not one to let the grass grow under 
her feet when she meditated doing a thing. She bearded 
her father in his den forthwith. Mr. Craven might 
have the name of being a hard man with the tenantry, 
and indeed with people generally, but in the hands of 
his one handsome girl he was softer than wax. 

She sat down on the arm of his well-worn leather 
chair and opened out the matter that was in her 
mind. 

‘‘ Do you know,’’ she said, “ there’s a lot of horrid 
little talk going on about your prize tenant, O’Kavanagh 
of the Keep and his family? It seems that Mr. 
O’Kavanagh and they became great friends.” 

I know,” said the agent. ‘‘ Denis told me so him- 
self. He said that young O’Kavanagh sat with him 
smoking of evenings and listening to the old mother’s 
stories. She looks as if she had a good many to tell, 
although she won’t tell me. She doesn’t think me 
sympathetic.” 


176 


JULIA 


“ She has the Irish reticence. It is only the English 
who unpack their secret hearts to you at the first 
meeting. The Irish use speech to conceal their 
thoughts, as the Frenchman said. No foolish con- 
fidence about them. Well, that is precisely the view I 
take of Mr. O’Kavanagh’s visits to the Keep. But the 
vulgar make vulgar gossip of it. They suppose he was 
attracted by one of the daughters.’' 

“ Oh ! ” Mr. Craven looked startled. “ They say 
that, do they ? Young O’Kavanagh would never be so 
foolish. I thought myself his attraction lay in quite a 
different quarter. I hardly ever saw him that he was 
not at your side, Moll.” 

“We like each other ; we are good comrades. You 
think every one is in love with me^ you foolish old 
person.” She ruffled her father’s iron-grey locks. 
“ Mr. O’Kavanagh and I like each other very much 
indeed. That is one reason why I am angry at the 
stories.” 

“ What stories, Mary ? ” 

“ Every day one hears a new one. At first it was 
that the father asked Mr. O’Kavanagh his intentions 
and showed him the door when he acknowledged that 
he had none. The next was that Mr. O’Kavanagh had 
to make an excuse of poor old Sir Jasper’s chest to fly 
off to the South of Europe till Denis O’Kavanagh’s 
wrath had died down. The latest is that there is to 


DONNA QUIXOTE 


177 


be a breach of promise case, and that the matter is 
already in the hands of Crowley, the attorney. What 
to-morrow’s story will be I do not know.” 

“ I am very sorry,” said Mr. Craven, vexedly. “ I 
have the highest opinion of those O’Kavanaghs. And 
that young O’Kavanagh should have made such an 
ass of himself ” 

“I don’t see it in that light,” said Mary. ‘'It 
seems to me that Mr. O’Kavanagh sought out those 
people because they had very remarkable and inter- 
esting qualities, and claimed their friendship on the 
score of relationship. And they accepted his claim 
and admitted him into their family circle, forgetting 
what a horrid, spiteful little world it is.” 

“ You think so, Moll ? ” 

“ I think so. I want you to have business at the 
Keep, and to take mamma and me with you. Do you 
remember how you always took me about with you 
when I was a small girl, perched up on the seat of your 
high dog-cart, and how you taught me to drive before I 
was six years old ? Why don’t you take me now ? ” 

“ Because you’re a fine lady with a saddle-horse and 
a dog-cart of your own.” 

“ I remember Mrs. O’Kavanagh’s heather honey and 
home-made raspberry jam distinctly. And how she 
let me go with her into the cool wet dairy to skim the 
cream for our tea. I can smell the cream still, and see 

N 


178 


JULIA 


the green sunny branches outside the barred window. 
I should like to go again. Have out the barouche, 
and take mamma and me” 

“ If the unpleasant stories should be true ! ” said 
the agent, uneasily. “ It would be a nice thing if my 
wife and daughter were bolstering up people who were 
taking a breach of promise case against the heir of the 
estate.” 

‘‘ How little faith you have ! You know the people 
— have known them for years 1 ” 

“ I confess it is very unlike them. Now let me be, 
Moll. Let me think about it. I’ll let you know 
presently if I can oblige you.” 

Miss Craven was too wise to press the matter, and 
went off, leaving her father to his neglected business. 

That evening he was riding down the village street 
when he saw Father John O’Driscoll leave a cottage 
and walk briskly on in front of him. In a few minutes 
he overtook him. They had left behind the straggling, 
noisy, dirty village street, and the train of children to 
whom Father John had been distributing small coins 
for sugarstick out of the depths of a hidden pocket in 
his faded cassock. 

Mr. Craven knew the priest slightly. Something 
of his daughter’s prejudice, with something of fear of 
what his neighbours might say, would have prevented 
the acquaintance from going further, even if he had 


DONNA QUIXOTE 


179 


been sure that he and the priest would be in sympathy. 

as he pulled up his horse and the priest turned 
about at his voice, he was struck, as he had been many 
times before, by the nobility of the face, the calm of 
the large blue eyes, the splendid brows, the humorous 
lips, the expression of the man — ascetic for himself, 
human for all the rest of the world. 

I am very glad to see you. Father O’Driscoll,” he 
said. “ There is something you can enlighten me about, 
doubtless, though I never dreamt of asking you till 
this moment.” 

I am at your service, sir,” the priest responded, 
with grave courtesy. 

'' It is about “young O’Kavanagh — young Mortimer 
— and the O’Kavanaghs of the Keep. I have a great 
respect for Denis O’Kavanagh and his mother.” 

“ Yes ; we all have.” 

“ There’s a story about that Denis has cut up rough 
about the young gentleman’s visits to the Keep ; that he 
asked his intentions with regard to one of those pretty 
girls of his ; that, finding they were non-existent, he 
forbade him the house ; that O’Kavanagh has bolted ; 
that there is to be a breach of promise case. I think 
you may be able to tell me how much of this is true. 
I have a particular reason for knowing, or desiring to 
know.” 

“ What do you think yourself, Mr. Craven ? You 


180 JULIA 

and Denis O’Kavanagh have been acquainted a good 
many years/' 

Father John was patting the sleek neck of the mare 
Mr. Craven was driving; he was a great lover of 
animals, and held views about them which might con- 
ceivably have shocked some of his flock if they had 
known them. 

“I think the story is a pack of lies," said Mr. 
Craven, with an expression that brought out the 
likeness between him and his daughter. 

“You are quite right. It is an insult to all the 
parties concerned. I know the facts of the case from 
Mr. Mortimer O’Kavanagh himself. Nothing could be 
more honourable to Denis and his family. His visits, 
I may mention, were to Denis and his mother. Know- 
ing Mrs. O’Kavanagh, I can well believe" — a smile, 
humorous and kindly, curved the priest’s mouth for an 
instant, and then was gone — “ that very little conver- 
sation ever passed between the young gentleman and 
her granddaughters. His friendship was for their 
elders. But lately she grew alarmed of what the 
gossips might say. Very unwillingly Denis was made 
her mouthpiece to say that the visits ought to cease, or 
at least to slacken off. I know that Mr. O’Kavanagh 
found himself cut off from a friendship he valued and 
fretted about it, fretted also that there should have been 
any danger of misconstruction. If he knew how much 


DONNA QUIXOTE 181 

cause there was for the old woman’s attitude towards 
liim — she loves him like a son — he would reproach 
himself bitterly. As it is, he need not know. The 
wretched gossip will be forgotten before he returns.” 

** In two months’ time ? ” 

“ They will find something else to talk about.” 

Thank you very heartily, Father O’Driscoll,” said 
the agent, holding out his hand. The gossip disturbed 
me. I only heard of it from my daughter yesterday^ 
I am a busy man, you see, and don’t hear the tittle- 
tattle. She was very indignant about it, and wanted 
to go straight off to the Keep, taking her mother in her 
train, to show people how little she and we believed the 
stories. But one can’t act on impulse like that without 
making inquiries.” 

“ I am glad I have been able to satisfy you,” the 
priest said, taking the hand extended to him. “ Miss 
Craven will he quite safe in following her generous 
impulses.” 

He had a shrewd idea that Mrs. O’Kavanagh would 
not promote another unequal friendship, even if it was 
with a lady this time ; but he said nothing, only took 
his leave, with a last understanding caress of the mare’s 
arched neck. 

“I wish young O’Kavanagh would marry Miss 
Craven,” he said to himself. It would be a most 
suitable match for him — unless Mr. Dacre has been 


182 


JULIA 


before him. Nothing good comes out of those ideas 
about mixing classes.” 

Father John, who was an aristocrat at heart without 
the least suspicion of it, was vaguely troubled lest 
the gossip about the Keep which hitherto had been 
general should become particular and fix upon Julia as 
the object of Mr. Mortimer’s visits. 

The very next day Mr. Craven had business at the 
Keep, and drove over with his wife and daughter in 
the barouche, which was a deal too wide for the wind- 
ing lanes. To get the barouche along the boreen was 
an adventure that tried the temper of Barnes, Mr. 
Craven’s English coachman, who had already for 
nineteen years endured the slipshod Irish ways. The 
Celt may affect the settler in Ireland, but not at all the 
settler the Celt. If Barnes was ordered for two o’clock 
he knew perfectly well that the mistress would not be 
ready till a quarter to four. Still, Barnes knew his 
duties too well not to obey orders, whatever other people 
might do. And Mrs. Craven’s real awe of Barnes 
never made her shorten by a minute the hour and 
three-quarters in which he sat his box in respectful 
dudgeon. 

Barnes will never forgive me for this, Mary,” she 
said, as the shining panels of the barouche swept the 
thorny hedges on either side of the boreen. 

“ You can tell him I insisted,” said Mary. 


DONNA QUIXOTE 


183 


She was a pet with Barnes, who was as domestic as 
most Englishmen are, and having had no children of 
his own had adored Miss Mary through her brilliant 
childhood. 

“ Tell him yourself, dear — do,” pleaded Mrs. Craven, 
unashamed of that fear of an invaluable servant which 
she shared with so many of her sex. ‘‘You can find 
an opportunity to do it, as though by chance.” 

“ It was I that insisted on the barouche, Barnes,” 
Mary called up in her high clear voice, ‘‘so don’t be 
grumbling ! ” 

“ I wouldn’t doubt you. Miss Mary,” replied Barnes, 
his face clearing as he looked back at the object of his 
adoration. 

Barnes had adopted the Irish country, although 
he could never approve of its ways, even to its 
phraseology. He had married an Irish wife, had 
embraced the Catholic religion with her, to the distress 
of his mistress, and had even taken up the Nationalist 
politics. 

“If Barnes lived in England,” Mr. Craven had 
often grumbled, “he’d be voting as the squire voted. 
Whereas here I might as well abstain from voting at 
an election since Barnes drives me to the polling booth 
and records his vote for the other man. If I could 
keep Barnes at home I might stay at home myself, only 
that L’Estrange would never forgive me.” 


184 


JULIA 


As soon as Mrs. O’Kavanagh heard that Mr. Craven 
had his wife and daughter with him she came out to 
the barouche and insisted on their coming into the 
house. 

‘‘Once Mr. Craven and Denis get out among the 
bullocks,” she said, “ there's no knowing when they’ll 
be back. You’ll let me give you a cup of tea, Mrs. 
Craven ? It’s years since you were at the Keep. We 
often used to see Miss Mary when she was a bonny 
little lady driving everywhere with her papa. Not 
that she’s less bonny to-day.” 

Mary jumped out of the barouche laughing, and 
held out her hand for her mother to alight. 

“ I haven’t forgotten your teas, Mrs. O’Kavanagh,” 
she said, “ and the home-made bread, and the raspberry 
jam and the honey, and the little cups with roses, and 
the big china teapot, and the dairy where we went for 
the cream. I loved it all. Only papa has given up 
taking me about with him on those pleasant drives 
since I left school. My leaving school seemed to put 
an end to so many delightful things.” 

Mrs. Craven was looking about with approval on 
the well-kept little lawn, with its flower-beds and the 
big clumps of fuchsias, the laurustinas and Portugal 
laurel, the shiny bay-trees, that framed the white 
house. 

“ Such a pretty place,” she said appreciatively. 


DONNA QUIXOTE 185 

“ I always told you the Keep was lovely,” said her 
daughter. 

They entered the house by its labyrinth of long, 
low corridors, all spotlessly white, with new-scrubbed 
floors ; and leaving her guests in the parlour, Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh went in search of a granddaughter to help 
her to do the honours. 

She returned with Julia walking with downcast 
eyes beside her ; Julia was the only one within doors. 
After she had shaken hands with the visitors she said 
something about getting the tea, and would have 
stolen out of the room, but Mary Craven stood up 
impulsively. 

Please, may I help, Mrs. O’Kavanagh?’* she 
asked. “I should so like to go with your grand- 
daughter, if she^will allow me. I can cut the bread- 
and-butter, 'and I do want to see the kitchen again, and 
the dairy, and the pantry, and all the places where I 
followed you when I was a child.” 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh smiled and consented. She was 
taken with Mary’s frank, fair face. 

Ko guile behind that,” she said to herself. 

At first Mary found it difficult to win Julia from 
her shyness ; but at last, by dint of doing all the talk 
herself and not looking at Julia, she broke down the 
barriers. At her suggestion they carried a table out 
to the lawn, and spread the tea there, and a delightful 


186 


JULIA 


tea it proved. Mrs. O’Kavanagh, like a good many 
old-fashioned Irish people, would have none of your 
cheap teas. The tea with its fresh cream smelt 
fragrantly and tasted deliciously. Everything on the 
table was excellent, and the appointments, fine n apery, 
beautiful china, and thin, old-fashioned silver could 
not have been better. 

Mary left her mother lamenting that she could 
never get such a cup of tea at home, and beguiled 
Julia away to show her the garden. Mary's candour 
and goodwill were so obvious that it was impossible 
not to trust her. Julia found herself talking to her 
visitor after a time as though she had known her for 
years. Finally, when Denis and Mr. Craven returned 
from what Mary called worshipping the bullocks. Miss 
Craven had to be sought for, and was found in Julia’s 
room in the upper story of the Keep. 

“ I am coming again, oh, very often ! ” she said, 
making her farewells. It has been delightful. And 
I want Miss O’Kavanagh to join us at our Gaelic class 
which we hold every week. She has promised me that 
she will, if you will permit it.” 

But at that Mrs. O’Kavanagh looked doubtful. 
She was not especially anxious that Julia should be 
found among the young ladies of the county families, 
who were discovering after Mary Craven had given 
them the lead, that they were Irish and enthusiastically 


DONNA QUIXOTE 


187 


desirous of learning the language, and something of 
the literature of their late-found country. Nor did she 
think Julia would be particularly happy if she were 
pushed into that world. 

She’s an odd child,” she said, with a tender glance 
at Julia ; ** she’s never happy away from her old Gran’s 
apron-strings.” 

Mary had an idea that Julia did not look par- 
ticularly happy at this moment; but of course she 
said nothing of that. As for the Gaelic class, it 
must wait till she had brought Julia’s grandmother 
round. 

She raved about Julia to all the members of her 
circle. 

“Blood will show,” she said. “They were great 
chieftains when my ancestors were doing discreditably 
as common soldiers. I hope she will consent to be my 
friend.” 

“ Craven ! Ah, to be sure ! ” said Jim Dacre, to 
whom this speech was made. “ I suppose the gentleman 
who gave you your name did run away. What a 
freak you must be. Miss Mary ! I wonder what Dacre 
derives from ! Do you suppose the Conqueror endowed 
us with one acre, and that we have grabbed a good 
many since ; or is it that one of us went crusading and 
took part in the Siege of Acre and got the name of 
the town for his own. Odd, wouldn’t it be, if the 


188 


JULIA 


descendant of the Craven had all the pluck, and the 
descendant of the other was a poltroon ? 

‘‘ I never credited you with poltroonery, only with 
caution,’* said Mary, handsomely. 

“ I cannot credit you with so much, Donna 
Quixote,” was the mocking answer. 


CHAPTER XVI 

“WHEN THE wine’s IN ” 

J OE Quinlan had taken his punishment at the hands 
of young O’Kavanagh, and the letter in which Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh had announced that the Quinlans, mother 
and son, need no longer expect to be received as friends 
and relatives at the Keep, better than could have been 
expected of him. 

He had read the letter quietly, with a heavy flush 
and a muttering between his teeth. He had an unmis- 
takable black eye, and an ugly cut across the cheek- 
bone, which he might explain away as he liked at 
market or fair or board-meeting. Every one knew that 
some one had been “punishing” Joe, and there were 
many delighted grins and sly winks behind his back. 
But how or where the punishment was inflicted, or by 
whom, was Joe’s secret. That was something his 
mother could not wring from him, and, knowing Joe, 
she had desisted after a while. She remembered Joe 
in his growing days, a fat, imperturbable boy whom the 


190 


JULIA 


undiscriminating had called a “ slob/’ i.e. a soft, indeter- 
minate person. Such Joe was to a certain point; then ^ 
there was a hardness, an obstinacy, as though one should 
dig through mud to find a strata of rock that was im- 
pregnable. She remembered her own amazement when 
her “ soft ” Joe first displayed this remarkable quality. 
She had an idea that Joe’s disfigured countenance had 
a good deal to do with "the ould consequence’s” 
amazing letter; but for her the connection was lost. 
Joe was the only one who could give it to her, and it 
was no use trying to make Joe speak. 

One effect of her powerlessness was to exasperate 
her even more than she would otherwise have been 
against the O’Kavanaghs. If J oe was silent she made up 
for it. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was busy 
about the family at the Keep. Even the neighbours, 
who were at first exhilarated by her denunciations, 
grew tired of a tongue that was " like the clapper of a 
bell.” To be domiciled with it was a doom of Sisyphus 
for a man already exasperated within himself, suffering 
the pangs of an honest passion baffled and rejected. 

"You’ll keep from the drink while you have that 
nasty cut,” said the doctor. "You’re a full-blooded 
person, Mr. Quinlan, and drink might cause in- 
flammation.” 

J oe turned a bloodshot eye upon him. " If you’d 
tell the old woman to hold her tongue, doctor,” he 


“WHEN THE WINE’S IN” 191 

said, ‘‘ I’d be safer. It would drive Father Mathew to 
drink if he had to listen to her all day.” 

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He knew Bridget 
Quinlan and her kind, and he had a lively memory of 
Mrs. Quinlan’s old father-in-law remarking, almost 
with his last breath, that thanks be to goodness the 
grave was quiet, anyway. 

I’d leave the house to her as much as possible,” 
he said. Couldn’t you get away a bit ? Couldn’t 
you have business to take you away ? Or, maybe, 
pleasure ? ” 

^'I’ve to be more careful with the money now,” 
said Joe, sullenly. “It wasn’t like when I had old 
Peter’s money coming to me. I was a rich man then 
— in the future, anyway.” 

However, the opportunity for Joe’s change arrived, 
and in a way to save J oe’s pocket. 

The affairs of a certain representative body to which 
Joe belonged demanded that a deputation should be 
sent before a House of Lords Committee, and Joe, as 
“ a great stirring stick ” in politics, was selected to go, 
not without chaff from his feUows on the Board. There 
was one, Tom Larkin, whose badinage on the subject 
of Joe’s black eye would have provoked Joe beyond 
endurance if it were not for the deliverance he saw 
awaiting him from his mother’s tongue and from the 
everyday things which kept his mortification at fever- 


192 


JULIA 


heat. So he took quite amiably Tom’s jocose entreaties 
to keep his fighting spirit under when he got to the 
other side. He was going to enjoy himself at the 
expense of the ratepayers. Perhaps that wonderful 
City of London would make him forget how Julia had 
repulsed him, and the fool he had made of himself in 
going to her when he had drink in him, and the injury 
he had received from O’Kavanagh of Moyle, and the 
loss of Peter Finegan’s money, and all the other things 
that had been fretting and worrying him to death. 

As he went away he carried with him the sound 
in his ears of his mother’s last speeches. Of course 
they concerned the O’Kavanaghs. “The ould con- 
sequence” had shown her hand too plainly, and had 
tried to secure Mr. Murty for Julia. And Mr. Murty 
had turned tail and fled. He had gone off among the 
blackamoors with Sir Jasper, and Denis O’Kavanagh 
was swearing he’d have the law of him as soon as ever 
he set foot in Ireland again. The whole neighbourhood 
was agog with the scandal, 

“Whisht, woman,” said Joe, very smart in his new 
check suit and bright blue tie. “ If you’ve stories to 
tell, tell something a man can believe. Is it Denis 
O’Kavanagh to be after forcing any one to marry his 
daughter ? ” 

He was unconscious of magnanimity in the speech, 
but was pleased with his common sense and judgment. 


WHEN THE WINE’S IN 


193 


For a fortnight he hung about the Palace of West- 
minster, feeling an inflation in being there, and in his 
official capacity that was the measure of his simplicity. 
He got to know every house of refreshment in the 
Strand and Fleet Street; he dined at Gatti’s, and 
gaped at the Aladdin splendours of the Empire and 
the Alhambra. He went to Kew Gardens one Sunday, 
on the river to Eichmond the next, always sticking 
close to the other members of the deputation, for they 
were secretly in awe of the great city, and felt like lost 
children out of sight of each other, although collectively 
they were lions. They were civilly treated by members 
of Parliament. They knew the great men by sight, 
and could talk with a tripping intimacy of ** Balfour ” 
and “ Chamberlain ” and Wyndham ” — more espe- 
cially of the latter, since in a manner of speaking he 
belonged to them, and was to play a part in certain 
apocryphal anecdotes which would astonish the vil- 
lagers when they should return home. They had 
discovered countrymen among the policemen on duty 
in Palace Yard and about the Houses of Parliament. 
They had acquired a fine, off-hand way of calling a 
hansom or summoning a waiter in a restaurant. For 
one wonderful day they had been privileged to air 
their views before a bench of titled persons, of whom 
they would speak familiarly as “Eichmond and 
Gordon” and “Coventry” and “Wemyss” and 


194 


JULIA 


“ Beauchamp,” during the many years in which their 
adventures would become a household tale. 

However, the money was running short, and the 
deputation could no longer flatter itself that it had 
any business which could not be transacted by its 
counsel. It was time to return home. Their very 
last night in London was devoted to an omnibus ride 
which shouldstake them from one end of the vast city 
to the other — their dwindling purses enforced modesty 
in their entertainment that last evening. 

Joe found himself separated from his fellows in the 
solitude of a garden seat on an omnibus roof crowded 
with persons who had never even heard of Ballina- 
more. At first the solitariness depressed him, accus- 
tomed all his days to a place where every one was 
known to every one. He felt vaguely melancholy, 
homesick for the little fields and the thatched cabins 
and the mountains, for the cry of the peewit and the 
reek of the turf-smoke. The endless miles and miles 
of houses, the strange and beautiful, ever-dwindling 
perspective of street-lamps, with the gamut of colours 
running from steel-blue to gold, awoke the exiles’ 
sickness in him. He was glad to be going back to 
Ballinamore, little as it could hold for him since Julia 
O’Kavanagh’s eyes had looked aversion into his. 

His fellow-travellers on the ’bus seemed to be all 
courting couples. He stared at the unabashed male 


»‘WHEN THE WINE’S IN 


195 


arms about the feminine waists, the feminine heads on 
male shoulders, the hand-clasps, the occasional kisses. 
He wished he had not been left behind when the other 
^bus, loaded up with his fellow-members of the depu- 
tation, had rolled off into the glimmering darkness. 

His mood became a gentle one. He forgot even to 
be enraged at those other fellows parading their love 
affairs. If he had not been such a fool as to go to 
Julia and frighten her as he did, might not the result 
have been very different ? Of course he had frightened 
her. She was timid. It was one of the things in her 
that attracted him. He had never cared for the bold 
and venturesome type of girl. He could be bold for 
his wife and himself. He had a comfortable opinion of 
himself as a specimen of manhood, and the woman he 
selected should not dispute his mastership. He wanted 
no one swaggering beside him on his hearthstone. 

He attached little importance now to his mother’s 
stories about young O’Kavanagh and Julia. He had 
been fool enough to frighten Julia, and she had cried 
out for help, and O’Kavanagh of Moyle had come on 
the scene, and had not discriminated between himself, 
Joseph Quinlan, Poor Law Guardian and District 
Councillor, and half a dozen other things, urging his 
honourable suit and the chance ruffian who frightens 
a girl. The change from home had certainly been of 
benefit to Joe’s state of mind. 


196 


JULIA 


Still, supposing there had been anything in it ; 
supposing Julia had fancied O’Kavanagh of Moyle; 
why, he had gone away and left her — had left a clear 
field to the man who liked her well enough to forgive 
the injuries he had suffered from her family, to forget 
and forgive. Was not the moment propitious for his 
own suit? He began to wonder what fortune Denis 
would give with his daughters, though, to give him his 
due, Julia’s dowry weighed little in his thoughts. 

It must have been the proximity of the courting 
couples that fired him. • He would go home, and go 
straight to Julia, and tell her that he would take the 
pledge for her sake. He would forget and forgive. 
If she had been foolish enough to have a fancy for 
young O’Kavanagh of Moyle — Joe had the lowest 
estimate of the female intellect — he would show her 
that he was the fine, generous fellow who could marry 
her out of hand and never throw things up to her. 
She would see that he could do the handsome thing 

O 

by her. 

His heart took an unreasonable leap from depres- 
sion to elation. The ’bus was passing through a street 
of cheap shops with shaded lights flaming upon the 
windows and their contents. On an impulse he got 
down as the ’bus stopped, walked along by the brilliant 
windows, stared at their contents, finally entered one, 
and bought a necklace of silver filigree daisies with gilt 


WHEN THE WINE’S IN 


197 


hearts. It was for Julia. How would she look when 
he produced it ? There was not a girl in Ballinamore 
with an ornament so choice to his mind as the 
necklace. 

His fellows chaffed him as they travelled home 
next day a little languidly, for the unusual dissipa- 
tions of their London fortnight and the unwonted 
journey had tired them out. Only Joe wore a trium- 
phant smile. “Begad,” said one, “you’d think the 
fellow was going to his own wedding.” But Joe held 
his peace. 

However, five minutes after he had returned home, 
the blue devils cast out by the visit to London had 
returned sevenfold. He had been wondering if he 
might present himself at the Keep that evening. He 
never doubted that he could mollify Mrs. O’Kavanagh’s 
severity if he gave his energy to it. To be sure, she 
had written a nasty letter ; but, then, his own mother 
had begun that. It was a war between the old women. 
He was impatient till he had seen Julia and offered 
her his gift, and had made it plain to her that he was 
prepared to offer something much more valuable. 

What was his mother saying ? There she was at 
it hammer and tongs about the O’Kavanaghs and her 
grievances against them. To him the past fortnight 
had been incredibly long, packed full as it was with 
new and exciting experiences. It seemed years since 


198 


JULIA 


he had sat in his place before, and listened to his 
mother's monotonous, peevish tongue. To her the 
fortnight had just been fourteen days; fourteen days 
at Ballinamore, gone as dull, uneventful days go — 
unmarked, unnoticed. It is the days without events 
that go by faster than the wind. 

Joe had had a good many half-glasses of whisky on 
the journey, although he had resolved to be abstemious 
in the future for Julia's sake. ITow he leant over, 
took the decanter of whisky and half filled the tumbler. 
He wanted something to deaden the monotony of his 
mother’s complaints. 

*‘Let me have supper without the O'Kavanaghs,” 
he said irritably, and then drained his glass and filled 
it again. 

He had thought to have had a great appetite after 
his journey; but, somehow, his mother's voice had 
killed his healthy hunger. He sat down in the 
chimney-corner to smoke his pipe, and fell asleep for 
a few minutes. Presently he awoke, feeling for the 
moment uncertain where he was. His mother's voice 
droning on filled him with unreasonable fury and 
disgust. What was she saying ? It was Julia again. 
There was a friendship between Julia and Miss Craven ; 
Miss Craven was at the Keep two or three times a 
week. People were saying that after all there was 
something in the story about Julia and Mr. Murty 


WHEN THE WINE’S IN 


199 


and Miss Craven knew, and was being kind to the girl. 
The wildest rumour was that O’Kavanagh of Moyle 
would marry Julia as soon as Sir Jasper was laid with 
his fathers; but that was a story Mrs. Quinlan for 
one did not believe. The plain fact to every one was 
that Julia was fretting, and fretting for Mr. Murty. 

Joe broke into his mother’s monotone with 
a drunken laugh, followed by a curse. She had 
awakened some of his old jealous fury. 

'*Very good story,” he said. '‘Mr. Murty marry 
Julia O’Kavanagh ? Not so likely! A girl that 
meets him in Abbey at night — her own cousin not 
— so much as — as ” 

His head nodded, feU to one side, and he lay in 
most ignoble sleep, quite unconscious of how he had 
betrayed his secret. But his mother sat with a miser- 
able satisfaction in her face. So that was what had 
happened. Joe had disturbed a lovers’ meeting 
between Julia and Mr. Murty. And Mr. Murty had 
displayed his resentment in a way that had given Joe 
the cut under his eye and the ugly black bruises. Joe 
had placed her revenge in her hands — her revenge 
upon that insolent old woman who had hardly been 
able to conceal her intolerance of the Quinlans. Only, 
Joe must not know. Joe had meant to keep his 
secret, and she had known before now what it was to 
tremble at her son’s resentment. 


200 


JULIA 


She rubbed her hands softly at the thought of how 
Joe’s secret had escaped him. She was a slatternly, 
uncomfortable woman to live with, and she had been 
always glad when Joe’s father had drunk deep enough 
to be insensible to her wretched housekeeping. Once 
again she was grateful to the drink that had placed 
her vengeance within her reach, and looked at the 
nearly emptied decanter of whisky with an unpleasant 
complacency. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE COUESE OF A SLANDEK 

Whethek it was the effect of his potations overnight, 
or whether Ballinamore had brought him to his senses, 
Joe awoke with all his fine illusions dispelled, in a 
mood contemptuous of his late dreams and visions. 

Before he left his bedroom he put away the filigree 
necklace at the back of the iron safe in which he kept 
the few important documents he possessed, doing it 
with a stealthiness which showed how frightened he 
was of ‘‘the ould one's” ridicule if ever she should 
come to discover it and guess for whom it was in- 
tended. 

The O’Kavanaghs might go and be hanged, he said 
to himself. Sorrow on him if he was going to follow 
Julia any more! She might be glad enough to look 
at him yet ; but if that day came, she'd have to go on 
her bended knees to him before he'd take any notice of 
her. So he vapoured to himself angrily, getting into 
his everyday clothes with a sullenness that attested 


202 


JULIA 


how he felt his fall from his late splendours to his 
dreary, daily round. 

Mrs. Quinlan, possessed of a secret, was of a sudden 
discreet. Over-discreet, if the truth were told; but 
Joe was not in a state of mind to make fine distinctions, 
else he might have marvelled at the sudden dropping 
of the O’Kavanagh topic. As it was, his aching head 
was as sensible of relief as though the most intolerable 
clamour had suddenly faded away in restful silence. 
If his mother had been ding-dinging about Julia that 
morning he could not have endured it. He was oddly 
grateful to her for the respite, and sat silently drinking 
cup after cup of strong Ceylon tea with the intention 
of clearing his bemuddled brain. 

Later in the day, after a walk about his fields, he 
came home to a rough, plentiful dinner, and set out to 
entertain his mother with the tale of some of his doings 
in the great metropolis, as he called it. The story had 
to begin at the beginning, and to be told with all 
details, so that Joe had barely got as far as London in 
about an hour’s recital. Then he was called away, and 
went in much improved spirits, the wind over the 
mountain having blown away his headache, promising 
a continuance of the story after tea. 

His mother saw him go with relief that displayed 
itself in a series of short ejaculations as soon as the 
door closed behind him. Joe had not got to that 


THE COURSE OF A SLANDER 


203 


personal stage in the narrative when it was likely to 
appeal to the maternal heart and pride. So far it had 
been a wearisome iteration of railway trains and steam- 
boats, and Mrs. Quinlan’s patience had been sorely 
tried. 

She left the washing-up to her small handmaiden. 

'' If I find as much as the handle off a cup, Mary 
Anne Walsh,” she said, ‘*I’ll break every bone in your 
body when I come back.” 

She was huddling into her cloak by this time, 
having put on a clean, frilled cap, as for a visit of 
ceremony. 

Mary Anne grinned at this threat. Mrs. Quinlan’s 
ways with her dependants were somewhat impotent, 
and Mary Anne looked forward to a long, quiet after- 
noon playing “hop-scotch” with some friends from a 
neighbouring cabin on the sunny flags in the farmyard. 

The person to whom Mrs. Quinlan’s visit was to be 
paid was a certain Kate McCabe. Kate had been 
pretty and giddy in her youth, but that youth was 
now over, and crippled with rheumatism she sat all 
day on a bed making dresses for more fortunate people, 
and looking out through her big window on the world. 

She was insatiable for news, since she could never 
now go out to seek it. She was a small, pale, wizened 
person with a compelling eye, which had made many a 
one yield up a secret they had intended to hold firmly. 


204 


JULIA 


And she had a grudge against the O’Kavanaghs. In 
her old lost days of youth she had set her cap at 
Denis, and believed implicitly that she had not set it 
in vain if only his old mother had not interfered. 
There was absolutely no foundation for the belief. 
Denis had only been kind and gentle to the little 
fluttering creature with the towzled flaxen head and 
careless tongue, as he was to all women. And Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh had never taken Kate so seriously as to 
suppose that Denis was in any danger from her matri- 
monial projects. 

Kate was reported to know as many secrets as the 
priest, and was held in a corresponding awe. She could 
give counsel which many a one found it wisdom to take. 
She was like one who looks on at life without being of 
it. Sitting there, year in, year out, on the gay patch- 
work quilt, with many pillows at her back and under 
her arms to support her, she had acquired the wisdom 
of the looker-on who has no personal interest in the 
game. She could keep secrets, too, or she had not been 
so trusted. And being a power in the place, the girls 
and women brought her the tittle-tattle she loved, with 
an obsequiousness that had its reward when her interest 
was openly shown. There were times, however, when 
she pretended not to be interested. “What ould 
farrago of nonsense is this you are bringing me ? ” she 
would say, after turning a story inside out ; and would 


THE COUKSE OF A SLANDER 


205 


send the story-teller away as abashed as she who 
gathered her apron full of fairy gold, and displaying it, 
found it turned to withered leaves. 

Mrs. Quinlan unpacked her budget for Kate, and 
was rewarded by her high good humour after the 
hearing. 

“ IVe that lilac print of yours these nine months,” 
said the Sybil. “ ITl let you have it next Tuesday’s a 
week, if I don’t die before then.” 

She imposed patience on her queue of waiting 
customers ; and Mrs. Quinlan expressed a dispro- 
portionate gratitude at the prospect of getting her dress 
so soon. 

“’Tis a fine window you have here,” she said, 
looking out on the village street, of which Kate’s big 
window was a feature. 

Sure, why shouldn’t I ? ” the other responded. 
“ If it wasn’t for that window, and a friend dropping in 
now and again like yourself, I might as well be dead.” 

“ You don’t mind the people staring in at you ? ” 
don’t think of their side, I think of my own. 
It was a good thought I had when I got Pat Eorke to 
break out that window for me. Dear, dear, and so it’s 
true what you tell me of Julia O’Kavanagh. You’d 
never beHeve it of her, seeing her go by to the chapel 
as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. I 
wonder what Father John would think of it ! ” 


206 


JULIA 


You won’t be telling Father John ? ” 

Kate stared her amazement, and Mrs. Quinlan’s 
eyes fell. 

“Sure I know you wouldn’t be,” she whined. 
“ Every one knows you’re terrible prudent.” 

“I saw her walk down the street one day with 
Miss Craven,” went on Kate, as though she had not 
heard Mrs. Quinlan’s apology. “The grandmother 
doesn’t trust me with her dresses. I hear this one 
was bought in Tralee. It was white book-muslin, four- 
pence a yard, and it had little roses going round the 
tail of it. You’d think ’twas she was the agent’s 
daughter, and Miss Craven in her grey tweed Julia 
O’Kavanagh.” 

“There was always too much of a hugger-mugger 
about her. The priests and the nuns are as bad as 
anybody. I hear she does be always running up to 
the Convent.” 

“Kice company for the nuns if the truth was told.” 

“I always thought her real ugly, too, with her 
yellow skin and big eyes. A Dianya of a thing I call 
her ! You could have knocked me down when I heard 
. . . some one . . . saying she was pretty.” 

“ You mean Joe ? ” 

Under the compelling eye Mrs. Quinlan acknow- 
ledged that she had meant Joe. 

“ Better be straight with me, Biddy Quinlan, if you 


THE COURSE OF A SLANDER 207 

expect me to be straight with you,” said Kate, fiercely. 
What was it you were saying ? ” 

“ That Julia was a yellow, ugly thing, though some 
, . . Joe, I mean, called her pretty.” 

“ When I was twenty I could sit on my hair, and 
my waist was that genteel I could squeeze it in my two 
hands. I’m saying nothing against the girl’s figure, 
but I wouldn’t give you a pinch of snuff for a girl who 
wasn’t fair.’* 

“ I’m the same myself. But there’s no use minding 
the figarys of the men. I think myself Joe ought to 
have a fair girl. There’s Michael Keegan’s daughter. 
They say she’ll have a fine fortune.” 

“ I could be saying a word to Mrs. Keegan when 
she comes to fit her body on Thursday. Peggy Keegan’s 
a bit coarse in the complexion, and has a cast in her 
eye; but sure they’d give the more money for that, 
maybe.” 

“To be sure. Maybe Joe wouldn’t mind the com- 
plexion and the eye so much if he knew there was a 
good haul of money going with it. He’s fond of the 
money. Anyhow, I’m grateful to you, Kate.” 

“ So you ought to be. There’s a good many after 
Peggy and her bit.’* 

“ You won’t tell it came from me about Julia ? ” 

“ Never fear. I can hand it on in that way that 
the one I’ll tell it to, and that’s Polly Lynch — she can 


208 


JULIA 


be trusted to whisper it about, and she’s a great fool — 
won’t be sure after all if I told it to her at all, at all.” 

Sure the world knows you’re artful.” 

“I’d like to see old Honor O’Kavanagh’s pride 
brought down, and besides, if a girl doesn’t behave 
herself proper, it’s only right and fair that she oughtn’t 
to go about making herself out as good as any one.” 

“To be sure,” said the sycophant. “Dear, dear, 
what an escape my poor Joe had ! Well, I think I’d 
better be going. I’m obliged for the promise of the 
dress so soon. And you’ll find out about Peggy 
Keegan’s fortune. A thousand pounds, I suppose, 
besides the stock and the furniture. There’s a little 
Kerry I do see Mrs. Keegan milking I’d like to have 
for myself.” 

“ You’ll lose the match if you ask for the Kerry,” 
said Kate McCabe, dispassionately. “Mrs. Keegan 
thinks the world and all of that Kerry.” 

That very evening the story was whispered to Polly 
Lynch, and by her whispered to a friend. It was told 
so discreetly, so wrapped up in deprecation and innu- 
endo and suggestion and palliation that Polly could 
hardly be sure whether she had originally heard the 
story from Kate McCabe or whether she had not in 
fact carried it — whether it had come out of the mass 
of gossip which had set people talking of the O’Kav- 
anaghs, or whether it was something quite new. 


THE COURSE OF A SLANDER] 209 

Polly’s friend carried on the story to some one else, 
who told it to another, who told it to yet another, 

Mrs. Quinlan’s tale had been incomplete to start 
with — a couple of incoherent sentences muttered by a 
drunken man. They required filling in, something 
more understood than was told, a rounding-off, an 
elucidation. The story, whispered about in a secret 
way, gathered in circumstantiality and blackness as it 
went, till the reek of it was all about Julia O’Kavanagh, 
who was as innocent as a child, and had never hurt a 
creature since the day she was born. 

Oddly enough, it returned to Bridget Quinlan by 
way of her son. 

One hot day of June, in beautiful haymaking 
weather, he came striding in from the field, and sat 
down in the big kitchen, which his mother was making 
ineffectual efforts to tidy. The sun had scorched him 
red-brown, but the sun was not responsible for the 
strange haggardness and shock in his face. 

Do you know what they’re saying ? ” he asked. 

God in heaven ! do you know what they’re saying ? 
They’re saying that Julia O’Kavanagh . . . is . . .” 

His face became so dark a purple that his mother 
rushed at him in a fright, but he waved her off, and, 
seizing a jug of buttermilk that was on the table, he 
drank from it greedily. 

“ Did you hear it ? ” he asked, stammering. 

p 


210 


JULIA 


Is it me hear it ? ” asked Mrs. Quiulan, lifting 
her hands. ‘‘ Is it me hear it that never leaves my 
home, the poor, decent, hard-working woman ? What 
stories do they be having about Julia O’Kavanagh ? ” 

“ Any one will tell you ; the little children in the 
street have it by this time. We’d have heard it before 
only the world knows that me and Julia are cousins. 
Ko one knows where it comes from or who spread it.” ^ 
Do you believe it ? ” the mother asked curiously. 

‘‘ Believe it ! ” he shouted at her. “ Believe it ! Is 
it me believe that Julia is bad ? I’ll track down the 
story, and as God’s above us. I’ll kill the man or woman 
that told it first ! ” 

The passion died in him suddenly, and he dropped 
his head on his arms on the rough kitchen table and 
burst into tears. The mother looked at him for a 
minute or two, white as ashes, then, lest he should look 
up and see her guilt in her face, she left him to the 
sympathy of his tawny and white collie, who came and 
put his head on Joe’s knee. 

After a time Joe felt that silent sympathy, lifted 
his head, and looked down at the dog’s yearning eyes. 

‘‘The worst of it is I can’t do anything for her. 
Spot,” he said, ‘"for sure she didn’t want me. And I 
can’t go after him and ask him to right her, because 
Sir Jasper’s ill out there, and, to be sure, he’s got to stay 
with him. What am I to do at all, at all ? ” 


THE COURSE OF A SLANDER 


211 


But there was no counsel in the dog’s gaze of loving 
sympathy. Joe mechanically stroked the silky head, 
and then clumped upstairs in his heavy boots, heavier 
than usual to the ear, as though they carried something 
very heavy, and fell on his bed in a stupid sleep. 


CHAPTEE XVII 


THE DOUBT 

All those months since April — it was now July — 
Helen Grace had been busy with the trousseaux for 
her daughters. Her garden had been neglected during 
this time, for what was the good of keeping up what 
must soon return to wilderness ? She went to and fro 
a good deal between Lacklands and the Convent, where 
the fine underlinen was being made by Sister Gertrude's 
class of sewing-girls. It was more exquisite than it 
would have been for a home-keeping bride, since the 
tropical climates to which both brides were going 
required things of a flimsy delicacy. 

Lady Grace, like most feminine women, delighted 
in fine needlework. She found a kindred spirit in 
Sister Gertrude, who was an artist at the needle, and 
displayed with naive pride a little case of sewing 
implements which had been presented to her in child- 
hood by old Lady Kilmacreddan for proficiency in 
needlework. 


THE DOUBT 


213 


Lady Grace, on her part, brought Sister Gertrude 
various yellowed piles of fine garments which she had 
been making against the children’s weddings during 
the years of their growth. 

“I used to think I should make them all they 
would need,” the mother said. “ Of course, I never 
thought of their going to hot climates where they 
would require such great quantities of things. They 
laugh at me, and say I am preparing too much. Sir 
Patrick tells me that I undervalue the cleverness of 
the Eastern workers. He tells me that one has only to 
give them a pattern and they will reproduce any 
garment. Men — imagine. Sister Gertrude! Can you 
imagine a half-naked Hindoo, squatting outside on 
your verandah, turning out things exactly like these ? ” 

Sister Gertrude looked shocked. 

“ I’d send him packing about his business pretty 
quickly,” she said, “if I had to throw a pail of cold 
water over him. I can’t take to the idea of men 
making such things, either. I was in America once 
for three months before I entered the Convent. I was 
in service there. But I always washed my own 
things. I didn’t fancy a Chinaman handling the 
things I wore. There were some had their clothes 
washed by blacks. I never could think they’d wash 
them white myself.” 

Lady Grace smiled at the shrewd, capable peasant 


214 JULIA 

face. Sister Gertrude was one of those excellent 
devoted women of business, of whom every convent 
possesses one or two, who are not to be bought by poor 
worldlings for love or money. 

You’ll be wanting some things for yourself. Lady 
Grace,” she went on. We’ll have all these done and 
sent home next Wednesday. We could put your 
things in hand then.” 

‘‘I’ve been wondering if I couldn’t do with what 
I have. What do you think, Mary ? ” 

She turned to Miss Craven, who was sitting apart, 
rather silent for her. 

Mary Craven started, and came to her side. 

“ It depends on which of your daughters you are 
going to be with,” she said in a hesitating way. “ I 
suppose Hong-Kong will not be as hot as Calcutta, 
and also it depends on what you have already.” 

“ I wish I could take you with me, Mary,” said 
Helen Grace, caressingly. “It is my only grief in 
going that I must leave you. She will miss me so 
much, Sister Gertrude. As for where I am going, I 
suppose I shall have to divide myself between my two 
daughters. Perhaps Violet may want me most. She 
will not have Khoda’s retinue of servants. On the 
other hand, poor Ehoda will find herself in such a 
strange new position, so trying for a young thing, 
having to entertain a great deal, and very important 


THE DOUBT 


215 


people, and with all those strange Hindoo servants. I 
have never let them be troubled at all with the ajffairs 
of everyday life. Sometimes I think it must be Ehoda 
first. Violet will have a small establishment, and I 
believe good Chinese servants are excellent.” 

‘‘You had better provide for both climates,” said 
Mary, in a voice which made the shrewd little nun 
look sharply at her. 

“ Oh, but I’m afraid I can’t afford things for 
myself,” Helen Grace said, laughing and blushing. 
“ You see, I wanted my brides to be well provided, so 
as not to have recourse to the sewing-men for a long 
time.” 

“ Dear me, I should slap their faces,” said Sister 
Gertrude, thoughtfully. 

“ I dare say what you have will do very well,” said 
Mary Craven, in the same lifeless voice. 

“ I am losing all my friends,” she went on, as she 
and Helen Grace walked down the corridor together, 
and stood outside the door that led to the organ-loft 
to listen to some one playing on the organ. “ That is 
Julia O’Kavanagh. I am afraid the nuns are going to 
take her from me. I hardly ever see her now. She is 
always at the Convent with Sister Cecilia. They are 
teaching her all manner of things. I think she is 
gaining more accomplishments than she can bear, for 
she seems to me to be getting more and more shadowy.” 


216 


JULIA 


She pushed open the door a little way. Julia's 
eyes were on the printed score. Her lips were apart. 
All her thoughts were apparently in the music, the 
sound of which in her ears had prevented her hearing 
the opening of the door. A small child's face looked 
at them round the side of the organ in an unconcerned 
way. 

“ That is Julia and her bellows -blower,” said Mary 
Craven. The child is an orphan, and is devoted to 
Julia and music. What do you think of Julia ? " 

“ Poor child, she does not look very happy.” 

I don’t know how any one could look very happy 
who was going to be a nun, and I am afraid that is 
Julia’s fate,” said Mary Craven. “ I don’t see why she 
can’t stay in that delightful house, with the old grand- 
mother and father who adore her, instead of running off 
to a convent. Do you ? ” 

“We can’t exactly see her point of view,” Helen 
Grace answered gently. “But I must say the nuns 
look happy. And the place seems to suit her. She 
must be rather out of her element as a farmer’s 
daughter, a girl with those eyes.” 

“ Oh, there is no one for her to marry, of course,” 
said Mary Craven, a little irritably. “ But why need 
every one marry ? Happiness is possible outside 
marriage.” 

“ If I were a Eoman Catholic I should be dread- 


THE DOUBT 


217 


fully afraid of Ehoda and Violet slipping from me into 
a convent,” Helen Grace said. “ It is such an alluring 
place, and the nuns and their dresses and their 
environment so attractive.” 

I never should have any fear of them,'* said 
Mary, with a shrug of her shoulders. 

She had hardly said it when a sudden anxious 
tenderness clouded her face as she looked at her friend. 
They had left the Convent behind by this time, and 
were walking along the level road through wide 
stretches of country covered with bents and coarse 
grasses, “ stepping westward,” with the sun in front of 
them and the sea wind in their faces. 

“ You had better talk to Ehoda and Violet,” she 
said, averting her eyes from her friend’s face, about 
your plans for the future. You will know better then 
what to do about— about your clothes and things. 
I suppose they have been too busy to — to think of 
discussing the matter with you.” 

“ They have been taking it all for granted, of 
course. Poor Lacklands ! I shall be sorry to leave it. 
It will be painful getting rid of the things one has 
known all one’s life. Of course, there is no great hurry 
about that, for I shall be here till winter, till the 
children have had their honeymoons. I think I shall 
take Sir James’s advice about getting rid of the things. 
The sons-in-law are too occupied, even if they were men 


218 


JULIA 


of that kind of business. There never were a pair of 
men so occupied.'^ 

She laughed delightedly. They were at the gates 
of Lacklands by this time ; but Mary would not go in. 
She must be at home for tea. The tea-hour at Lack- 
lands was a time she did not much affect. It was the 
hour during which Khoda and Violet displayed the 
captives of their bow and spear to admiring feminine 
visitors. It rather enraged Mary to see Ehoda order 
about a person so dignified as Sir Patrick. However, 
he seemed to enjoy it, as though his orders came from 
a child, so Mary had no right to her grievance. 

She walked home, fretting and fuming against she 
knew not whom or what — at least, she knew against 
whom. It was against her friend's daughters. She 
felt the unreasonableness of her own fear that they 
would serve their mother ill. Why, if they were 
minded to their men would not let them. Men were 
always decenter than women, said Mary, hot-headedly. 
Sir Patrick Lorimer would never consent to the mother 
being left alone ; nor Harry, who knew how she wor- 
shipped those two minxes, to whom she had been 
so good when he was a small boy, and during his 
midshipman days. Mary dragged herself from the 
contemplation of her fears to look rather upon the 
upholding thought of those two decent men. But the 
fears would recur to her for all that. 


THE DOUBT 


219 


She was unwontedly captious during the tea-hour, 
and as she never could he sharp with her beloved 
mother, the brunt of her captiousness fell on Jim 
Dacre, who stood on the hearthrug taking cup after 
cup of tea from Mrs. Craven. Had he not adopted 
a tone of admiring enthusiasm about Khoda and 
Violet, professing to envy the lucky suitors who had 
carried off such prizes at that tender age that other 
men had had scarcely the chance to know of their 
existence ? 

“ ' Oh, my Love, my Love is young,' ” he had trolled 
out once, and had annoyed Mary disproportionately. 
Mary was twenty-six, and those praises of youth made 
her feel forty-six, at least, and undesired at that. 

You left Helen at home ? ” said Mrs. Craven. 

“ To see to the tea and cut the thin bread-and-butter 
for her daughters’ visitors. I wonder why they never 
do anything for themselves ! ” 

“ Because they find all the world at their beck and 
call,” put in Jim, from the hearthrug. 

“ How you will miss her ! ” said Mrs. Craven. 

“ I shall not miss her if she goes. I shall be very 
glad,” said Mary, with a flush. 

‘‘ My dear ! ” 

“I’m afraid they won’t take her,” blurted out 
Mary, with a horrible feeling that she was near tears, 
and wondering at her own indiscretion. 


220 


JULIA 


''Not take her!'’ Mrs. Craven repeated, in a 
bewildered way. 

Oh, I don’t know anything about it at all,” said 
Mary. “I am only afraid, horribly afraid. I don’t 
trust them.” 

“ Perhaps not,” said Jim Dacre, gravely. But it is 
an inhuman thing to think about them, unless one must.” 

‘'They have never spoken of her going; yet the 
marriage day is but a month away.” 

“ That is no proof. I know that Sir Patrick Lorimer 
expects her to be with them, from something he said 
to me the other day.” 

Mrs. Craven was called out of the room at this 
moment. Mr. Craven might lack love or liking from 
his poorer neighbours, if they held him in awe. There 
was no doubt about their feeling for Mrs. Craven. 
From sticking-plaster for a cut finger to a maternity 
outfit, or sheets to lay the dead in, she was their 
universal provider. She was also much in request for . 
the healing of quarrels, and on this occasion a pair of 1 
belligerents awaited her in the hall to have their 
differences reconciled. 

Mary drew a deep breath at Jim’s last speech. 

“ He really did ? Oh, how grateful I am I It was 
the only hope I had, the decency of the men.” 

“ You are less than just to the girls. It is not like 
you.” 


THE DOUBT 


221 


“It is very like me.” The colour flamed in her 
cheek. “I have always disliked and distrusted those 
two girls from the first day I ever saw them. Cold, 
selfish little cats ! ” 

“ Lovely little cats,” said Jim, striding forward to 
put his cup down. 

“ They are fortunate in having your advocacy.” 

“ I dare say their mother would be obliged to me.” 

Mary looked at him with such a wounded expres- 
sion that he made a step or two towards her. He had 
not meant to hurt her, but he had succeeded in doing 
: it badly. 

“ I see what you mean,” she said, in a broken voice. 
“ I ought to have remembered.” 

“ It is your love for her,” he said, trying to comfort 
I her. “You would do anything to make them as 
generous, as straight as you are yourself. What do I 
care about them 1 It is only that you must not make 
■ rash judgments. Mary ” 

“ Oh, you have hurt me,” she said. “ You have 
hurt me,” pushing away his hands and leaving him 
hastily. 

She did not notice that the servant who met her 
as she passed through the door held a telegram in her 
hand. She went to her room and put on her hat and 
left the house. There was only half a mile between 
her and Lacklands, and she came and went as she 


222 


JULIA 


would. If she had been wronging Rhoda and Violet, 
the sooner she knew it the better. In her headstrong 
way she felt that she should want to lavish all her 
possessions on them if she had done them such wrong. 
Was it possible she had seen them in a distorted way 
because she had been jealous of them, at first about their 
mother’s love for them, at last because — some one — 
had liked to be by Violet’s side, and had admired the 
girls’ beauty, and had talked of their radiant youth 
with delight ? She wronged her own honest comeliness 
and her twenty-six years. Because I am plain and 
turning to thirty,” she asked, must I hate their youth 
and beauty ? ” 

She thought on the things she would give them for 
wedding gifts. She would do without a new saddle for 
the winter, forego one or two other delights, so that the 
richness of her gifts might speak her repentance, even 
if no one understood. 

She would reassure herself about the girls’ inten- 
tions towards their mother. If she had not spoken she 
would speak herself. If she found they were honest 
what would she not do to make amends? With 
characteristic impulsiveness she felt she could not 
sleep till she knew. Why had she not taken the 
simple, straight course before, instead of worrying her- 
self to death with suspicions, and deserving Jim 
Dacre’s rebuke. She must have hated them to have 


THE DOUBT 


223 


believed them capable of such monstrous cruelty and 
selfishness. Perhaps it was in her own heart the dark 
things lurked. 

She lifted her head once to listen to a sound of 
wheels on the road behind her. Some one was driving 
very fast, fiying along the stony road. She had a 
vague wonder as to who could be driving in such a 
hurry. Ah ! it must be some one who wanted to catch 
the train which was due about this time. 

Yes, that was it. With her fine country ears she 
heard the car turn off on the steep incline that led 
down to the railway station. From the higher road 
she glanced towards the line and saw the distant smoke 
of the train. The passenger, whoever he was, would 
be just in time. 


CHAPTER XIX 


TROUBLE 

She walked into the hall of Lady Grace’s house as she 
was accustomed to, finding the hall-door open as usual. 
There was no one in the drawing-room. Through the 
windows she caught a glimpse of a white frock against 
the darkness of trees in the garden. How overgrown 
and unkempt the garden had become ! she thought ; 
how quickly Nature was taking back that which had 
been won from her ! 

She went out by an open window to find her friend. 
She heard no sound of the bride-elects’ laughter and 
chatter, nor the deeper voices of their swains. Autumn 
seemed to have come upon the garden, although it 
wanted ten days to August. There is no place where 
a neglected garden becomes sad so quickly as among 
the Irish rains and mild heats. 

“ Helen ! ” she called, “ Helen ! ” 

She followed the white frock, which had disappeared 
round the curve of the path before she came up with 


TROUBLE 


225 


it, and found Lady Grace standing by a fountain, with 
a fan in her hand, which she seemed to be examining. 

^Tve brought you the book you wanted, Helen,’* 
she said. “ I thought I should be sure to find you. 
Why are you alone ? And what a pretty fan ! ” 

Sir Patrick brought it for me. They have gone to 
the Eectory to play croquet. The fan is made of an 
Indian bird’s feathers.” 

Her voice, usually so beautiful, had no more life in 
it than any dead mechanical thing, and it filled Mary 
with a vague terror. 

“ What is the matter, Helen ? ” she cried. “ What 
has happened ? ” 

Lady Grace turned on her a Medusa face, in which 
all the soft dimpled prettiness had been turned to 
stone. 

“ I am not going with them, Mary,” she said, “ after 
all. I am to live alone here where they have made 
my life. I have never really cared about any one but 
them ” — in her absorption she did not notice that Mary 
winced — never really about any one but them. I 
think I shall die of it, Mary. There is no possibility 
that I shall go on living without them.” 

How long have you known ? ” Mary asked in a 
whisper. How that the calamity had fallen she was so 
overwhelmed with pity for her friend that even anger 
had no room in her mind. She seemed to have known 


226 


JULIA 


it a long time; to have become quite used to it; to 
accept it as one accepts intolerable things when one 
has become used to them. 

‘‘ Just after you left me. I came in and found the 
girls alone. We began talking about their pretty 
things. You know, Mary, I would have Violet’s outfit 
quite as pretty as Khoda’s, although she will not be so 
highly placed. They will look lovely in their frocks. 
They were always worth dressing, my pretty ones. 
You have no idea how pretty they looked when they 
were babies, with their arms bare, and their little 
sleeves tied up with red silk, and corals round their 
necks, and red ribbons in their little curly heads.” 

“ Yes,” said Mary. She felt as if she were listening 
to a mother’s tale of her dead children. 

“They were all I had, you see, Mary, once their 

father was taken. But now They were very sweet 

about it. I think they did not want to hurt me more 
than they could help. It was on the tip of my tongue 
to ask them which of them I was to come to first. You 
know, I really thought they would have cried out that 
they both wanted me, for I have always done every- 
thing for them. Then, as if they knew what was 
coming, Bhoda said, without looking at me, that I must 
not miss them too much. That, of course, they could 
not expect me to give up Lacklands, which I was so 
fond of, to be with them. And that Sir Patrick felt 


TROUBLE 


227 


that newly married people ought to be alone. And 
then, when I turned to Violet, she repeated almost 
the same thing. So it is settled for me, you see, 
Mary.” 

And then ? ” 

Mary drew her friend to a garden-seat and sat down 
beside her. 

“ And then I was dazed at first, Mary. There 

was a moment when I felt I must fling myself at their 
feet and implore them to take me. Do you think, 
Mary, that they know how impossible it is for me to 
live without them ? But, of course, they don't, the 
poor children. And then Sir Patrick and Harry and 
the Eectory girls came in ; and I sat and poured out 
their tea. I wondered if they would see it in my face. 
But no one seemed to notice.” 

“ It was not like Sir Patrick Lorimer,” said Mary, 
turning away from a suffering she felt she could not 
look upon to smell at a tiger-lily. “ But I have heard 
it said, that it is wisest for people to begin married 
life alone.” 

“ Of course, he is a man of the world ; he would 
have the wisdom of the world,” Lady Grace said, with 
a sudden eagerness. “ And it may be that he is quite 
right. Do you know, Mary, I think I could bear it if 
I felt that the children wanted me — that it was only out 
of deference to their husbands’ wishes that they left 


228 


JULIA 


me behind. The one thing that would wound me 
beyond bearing would be that it should be their will/* 
“I should believe in them,” said Mary, conscious 
of her own disingenuousness, but setting her teeth to it. 

Something more human came into Helen’s voice 
and into her rigid face, with its two hard fever spots in 
cheeks that were wont to be so softly pale. 

If I could only think they would miss me ! ” she said. 

“ They must miss you,” said Mary. How could 
they fail to miss you, seeing how you have devoted 
yourself to them ? They are not inhuman.” 

Inhuman ! Ho. Who could think it of my pretty - 
girls ? Mary, if I feel they are grieving for me a little, 
not enough to cloud the joy of their lives, but just a 
little, I can endure it. I can accept the will of God for 
me that I am to give them up.” 

''We must all accept that Will,” said Mary. 

" And they must not know how I feel it. I must 
keep it from them. Other mothers have to bear it, 
haven’t they? There is not very much to be done 
before the weddings. All their things are ready. I 
was keeping those three weeks for — for — my own pre- 
parations; and poor Jane’s. I have not yet told 
Jane. And the lovers are always here. How am I to 
keep myself from letting them see, Mary ? ” 

Mary looked about her helplessly, and had an 
inspiration. 


TROUBLE 


229 


** 1 should take up the garden again. Let them go 
away remembering everything at its most beautiful, not 
overgrown, autumnal, as this is.’* 

‘‘ I had been forgetting it. You see, I thought I 
should so soon be leaving it. I was to see Sir James 
to-morrow about disposing of the furniture, and had 
been meaning to write to your father about the lease. 
I thought he would let me down easy for your sake, 
Mary, although people do say that he is more careful 
of Sir Jasper’s interests than ever Sir Jasper was him- 
self, or his heir is likely to be.” 

“ Poor papa,” said Mary, gently. Sir Murty 
presently will push him aside, and papa’s occupation 
will be gone. They say Sir Jasper will not live to 
come home, but that he may last where he is even 
through the winter. For the present papa has full 
powers, since Mr. O’Kavanagh cannot leave Sir Jasper 
f6r a day.” 

‘‘ How happily it turned out for that poor old 
man,” Lady Grace said, almost enviously. 

'' Come inside,” said Mary ; “ the dews are beginning 
to fall. What time are they coming back ? ” 

“ They dine at the Kectory.” 

“Then, will you keep me to dinner with you? 
Jane’s assistant will take a note home saying that I am 
staying to dinner and asking them to send for me.” 

“ You are very good to me, Mary.” 


230 


JULIA 


Something of the natural colour and softness 
had returned to Helen’s face. 

“ It will come back again,” Mary thought. Once 
she is alone the trouble will overwhelm her again. 
But while I am with her we will keep it at bay. If 
she will only go on believing that it is not their fault.” 

She looked up at the tall, elegant figure in its 
trailing white gown. Lady Grace had not become 
dowdy for the sake of her daughters. She had 
exquisite taste for herself as well as for them, and 
she used it with unconscious instinct. Her clever 
fingers could make beautiful garments. The gown of 
white muslin with black spots was elegance itself. 

“ I wonder why people don’t fall in love with her 
instead of with them,” Mary thought, looking up at 
the spiritual face in its cloudy hair. The mother of 
two marriageable daughters had yet the air of a girl. 

As they turned, Jane confronted them. She had 
come down the garden path towards them, but they 
had not heard her because of the grass with which 
the path was overgrown. 

Her dark face wore more than its usual aspect of 
gloom. Of late Jane had been very gloomy, and 
Mary, coming upon her casually, and receiving no 
more than a dark nod in response to her greeting, had 
wondered once again at her friend’s predilection for 
Jane. She took no notice of Mary at all, but addressed 


TKOUBLE 


231 


herself to her mistress. At first Mary was afraid — 

I noticing the excited manners, the flushed cheeks, the 
dark fire in Jane’s eyes — that the woman had been 
drinking. But she did her an injustice. 

“Well,” she said, her eyes devouring Lady Grace’s 
pale face, “ we’re not to go — that’s it, isn’t it ? I’ve 
been watching you from the window upstairs, and I 
I suspected you knew at last. They’re casting us off 
like an old shoe, aren’t they ? I’ve known all along 
that they would.” 

“ Oh, Jane ! ” 

Lady Grace put out her two hands as though to 
stave off the torrent of words, but Jane went on, 
j waving away Mary’s attempt at interference. 

“ I always knew they’d do it,” she went on. “ I 
told you long ago that they’d walk to anything they 
I wanted over your body or mine. Their father was the 

I same before them ; he never cared about any one but 

himself. You and me, we’ve given up our lives to 
I them, and were glad to do it, and now they’re going 

I off to the end of the world and leaving us behind. 

I What are we going to do in that dark house over there 
! covered up in trees? You took me from the life I 

, liked, with the people and the streets and the cheer- 

fulness about me. I might have had children of my 
own by now, if it wasn’t for them. You’ve been 
• telling me they’d take us, and I tried to believe you. 


232 


JULIA 


but I knew them better than you, for all that you're 
their mother. Now, what are you going to do with 
me?" 

Lady Grace burst into tears. “Oh, Jane," she 
said, “ I thought we should always be together." 

As for Mary Craven, usually so brave and re- 
sourceful, the tragic suffering of the nurse’s face had 
stricken her dumb. Now, as the voice ceased, she put 
out a restraining hand. 

“Your mistress has enough to bear, Jane," she 
said. “ Help her to bear it." 

“ I’m sorry for her," Jane said roughly; “but I’m 
sorrier for myself. After all, she was their mother." 

She turned about sharply, and went back to the 
house. 

“ Jane will be sorry," said her mistress. “ She has 
a good heart, but she is distracted at losing them. 
You don’t know what a good heart she has, Mary." 

“ I suppose the primitive virtues manifest them- 
selves in a primitive way," Mary said. “She is a 
Northerner, isn’t she? I like the soft ways of our 
Southern people better." 

“She never thought anything of sleepless nights 
and restless days. She was such a comfort in illness." 

“ I can beheve it," Mary said gently, “ from your 
affection for her. I am sure she will be a comfort yet.” 

Perhaps it was an indication of Jane’s repentance 


TROUBLE 


233 


that the dinner served to them was unusually dainty 
and well cooked. At least, Mary suggested that it 
was so, and brought a pleased look for a moment to 
her friend’s face, which had seemed in an hour to lose 
its tender grace of youth and become autumnal like 
the garden. 

To-morrow,” she whispered to Mary, at parting, 
“ I shall have grown used to it. I shall not let them 
see what life without them means to me, lest they 
should go away in grief.” 

Coming in at dark to the drawing-room at Knock- 
beg, Mary found her mother alone, reading by lamplight. 
The solitary figure struck her with a sense of loneliness. 
Beyond the circle of the lamplight the room was in 
shadow ; a pale twilight yet lingered on the verandah 
outside the three long windows. 

She had been accustomed to find Jim Dacre there, 
playing whist with her mother, or doing anything else 
he was wanted to. She had said to herself often that 
she disliked and despised Jim’s love for the domesti- 
cities. To her, with her traditions, it was an unmanly 
thing. She could not imagine it in the young gentle- 
men about her, whose choicest hours were not those 
spent in the society of women, who were to be found 
in the drawing-room only on rare and special occasions. 
Now she was conscious of a sense of blankness at the 
absence of the familiar figure. 


234 


JULIA 


“ Why are you alone ? she asked, drawing off her 
gloves. 

‘‘Oh, my dear, you will be so sorry. Poor Mr. 
Dacre ! I am sure you will be grieved for him, Mary, 
although you were always quarrelling ” 

“ What about Mr. Dacre ? ” 

Something in Mary’s voice and face made her 
mother hurry up with what she had to communicate. 

“ It is not he, child,” she said ; “ so far as I know 
he is in perfect health. But he was summoned to his 
mother’s sick-bed — her dying bed — not ten minutes 
after I had gone out and left you quarrelling over 
those Grace girls. The poor fellow ; he left you a 
message : ‘ Tell Miss Mary I shall write,’ he said.” 

“ That would be because I knew how fond he was 
of his mother. He had told me. You see, we were 
not always quarrelling.” 

“ I hope she will get better, and that he will come 
back. I should miss him so dreadfully. He was 
always so cheerfully ready to do anything one wanted ; 
he never seemed to think of himself. I do hope we 
have not seen the last of him.” 

“ Why should we ? ” asked Mary, quietly. 

“ Oh well, you see, his father would need him, 
doubtless, if the mother were taken. There is only 
that extravagant elder son, and he is in the Army and 
can’t be at home with his father. Your father would 


TROUBLE 


235 


have to let him off, of course, if he were asked. I 
begin to feel pretty sure we shall not see him again.” 

“ Oh, I shouldn’t think that,” said Mary, preparing 
to go upstairs ; “ I think he is sure to come back.” 

Such a pleasant fellow,” lamented Mrs. Craven. 
“ I’m sure I never felt that I was an old lady with 
him. He seemed so pleased with my society. He 
seemed quite as well pleased to be with me as to be 
with you.” 

“ Although we were always — nearly always, quarrel- 
ling,” Mary said, with a short laugh. ‘‘How should 
he not like to be with you, who are peaceful and 
gentle ? ” 

Arrived in the retreat of her own room, she stood 
a few minutes with her hands clasped against her 
breast. 

“There is nothing but trouble in the world,” she 
said to herself; “nothing but trouble. And to think 
that I quarrelled with him up to the very end.” 


CHAPTER XX 

A HARBOUR OF REFUGE 

Mr. Craven had more to worry him even than his 
assistant’s sudden departure. He had come in with a 
cloud on his brow, which hardly deepened when he 
had been told of Jim Dacre’s summons and hasty 
departure. 

“ Poor fellow ! poor fellow ! ” he said. ''We must 
hope for the best.” 

But there was something perfunctory in the speech ; 
and his air was absent-minded as he stood with his 
back to the empty fireplace, staring into the shadows 
beyond the lamp. ^ 

" You have something on your mind, Alick,” Mrs. 
Craven said, with gentle solicitude ; " something more 
than poor young Dacre’s trouble. What is it ? ” 

" You are a wonderful woman, Mary. Yes, there 
is something, something infernally — I can’t help it, 
Mary — yes, infernally disagreeable. As black and 
ugly a thing as I’ve happened to meet with this many 


A HARBOUR OF REFUGE 


237 


a day. Oh, you needn’t look so alarmed. It doesn’t 
concern me nor your solitary chicken. At least, it 
concerns Mary very remotely. It is about young 
O’Kavanagh and that girl, Julia, to whom Mary took 
such a fancy.” 

More stories ! ” said Mrs. Craven. I thought we 
agreed not to listen to any of them.” 

“ I don’t say that I listen to this, but — the story is 
so — so damnably — I beg your pardon, Mary — circum- 
stantial that one must take notice of it if one’s daughter 
has been friends with the unlucky girl. I shouldn’t 
have allowed that friendship, not till I knew some- 
thing more. I’m always letting Moll overrule me. 
There are the blackest stories, the very blackest, I 
assure you, Mary, about this girl Julia and young 
Murty. Of course, it would reach us last. I hear 
that people are passing her by on the road, that even 
at church the seat she happens to occupy is left alone 
by the other girls. She is, in fact, a black sheep, 
marked, ^et apart with the very blackest brand upon 
her that it is possible for a girl to carry. I don’t know 
how her father will take it — and the old woman. 
They are as proud as Lucifer.” 

How do you mean to take it, Alick ? ” 

“ I ? I needn’t do anything, luckily. Denis 
O’Kavanagh has just paid his half-year’s rent, and I’ve 
settled about his draining that field on Windy Brow. 


238 


JULIA 


I shan’t have to see him for some time, and I’m glad of 
it. Of course, you must speak to Moll.” 

** I wonder how she will take it.” 

“You must make her understand how she is to 
take it,” said the agent, with portentously knitted 
brows. 

“ Do you believe the story, Alick ? ” 

“ What does it matter whether I believe it or not ? 
I have no proof that young Murty is a blackguard, but, 
on the other hand, I have none that he is not. And I 
know no more of the girl than that she comes of a 
good stock. My concern is that the friendship with 
Moll must cease. We cannot have even the lightest 
speck on the girl Moll has chosen to be friends with.” 

“ I am inclined,” said Mrs. Craven, in the gentlest 
of voices, “ to disregard this very black story as we 
disregarded the others. Then I was not greatly con- 
cerned. I did not know the poor girl. Now — I am 
sure there is no guilt in Julia O’Kavanagh.” 

“ But the girl’s character is blackened, somehow,” 
said Mr. Craven, aghast. His wife was usually the 
most timid, the most easily alarmed of women where 
any deviation from the straitest paths was concerned. 
“ You can’t have Mary in association with a girl whose 
character is being torn to pieces.” 

“I, for one, do not believe the calumny. If we 
acted as though we believed it, Alick, I do not like to 


A HAEBOUR OF REFUGE 


239 


think how we should seem in the sight of God. I was 
not particularly anxious that Mary should be friends 
with Julia O’Kavanagh. Those unequal friendships 
have their inconveniences. But, now, she must stand 
by her friend ; and I shall stand by her.'^ 

Mr. Craven whistled softly. “ Upon my word, you 
are a wonderful woman, Mary,” he said. “ Who could 
have believed you would take that point of view ? ” 

However, all this discussion might have been saved 
if the Cravens could have known of a conversation 
which had taken place only that day between Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh and the priest. Mrs. O’Kavanagh had 
called on Father John, and, finding him out, had awaited 
his return with an impatience which manifested itself 
in the way she wandered about the room, picking up 
this thing and that, restoring them to their places 
without seeing them. She looked ill; Father John’s 
housekeeper had carefully abstained from commenting 
on that fact when she received Father John’s visitor 
with an uneasy flow of conversation, which passed over 
the old woman’s head as though she had not heard a 
word of it. 

“ Well ? ” said Father John, coming in at last, and 
greeting her. ‘‘Well? How is every one? Take a 
glass of wine before we begin. Beautiful weather for 
the harvest. I don’t know when I’ve seen a more 
hopeful harvest.” 


240 


JULIA 


He, too, looked away from the old face, where age 
of a sudden had asserted itself, bringing out unsuspected 
lines and hollows, setting shadows as of a deadly 
fatigue. 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh stayed his hand as he would have 
fetched the wine. She looked towards the door, which 
was closed ; nevertheless she lowered her voice. 

“You know what they are saying about Julia?” 
she said, in a dry voice; and then made a sound as 
though she tried to moisten her tongue. 

“My child” — the priest’s voice was full of the 
deepest compassion — “I have heard it. I heard it 
some time ago. The busybody who brought it to me 
will not soon forget. I hoped it would pass you by ; 
that the lie would die of its wickedness before you 
could hear it. I have tried to trace it to its source, but 
the secret has been well kept. Child, let it go by. 
Trust in the justice of God. He will make the liars 
ashamed in His good time. She has not heard it ? ” 

“ If she heard it, it would kill her. I live in deadly 
fear. Her sisters must know. The people who have 
been their friends are telling it as plainly as they can 
by their actions. But it hasn’t reached her or Denis — 
not yet. When Denis hears it, I’d as soon they put a 
knife in his heart.” 

The priest closed his eyes, and looked for a moment 
almost as tired and old as the woman before him. How 


A HAEBOUR OF REFUGE 


241 


long were the powers of evil to prevail ? Who, of his 
flock, had been guilty of this enormous wickedness? 
Was he to see this innocent white lamb of his fold 
defiled by the tongues of slander, and stand by and do 
nothing? What message could he give from God to 
assure this broken-hearted woman that God would 
defend His own ? 

“ Nothing can touch her,” he said at last, brokenly. 
“ The thing will go by, will pass over. I shall discover 
its origin. None shall have absolution from their sins 
who have had part in spreading this horrible lie. It 
will not be for long.*' 

Meanwhile,” said Mrs. O’Kavanagh, “the story 
will come to her and to her father. What am I to do 
then ? I have always been a good woman. Denis never 
wronged any man. The child is as innocent as a baby. 
Why does God allow such things to happen to us ? ” 

“ Hush ! hush ! His mercy and justice are over all.” 

“ Let Him speak then ! ” Her voice was almost 
sullen, almost defiant. 

For a moment he had no words to answer her. 
Before he could find any she spoke again. 

“ There is just one way I see out of it,*’ she said. 
“ If Julia enters the Convent at once they will not dare 
believe ... if she is good enough to be a nun . . . 
my little girl. Father, do you think the nuns will 
have heard ? ** 

K 


242 


JULIA 


They do not carry such stories to the nuns.” 

Ought they to hear ... if they take Julia ? ” 

“ The Eeverend Mother knows. We can trust her 
wisdom, her charity, her love for Julia.” 

“They want Julia; they’ve been training her for 
themselves since she was a child. Julia was born a 
lady ; they’ve given her the education of one. Let her 
go in at once. There is nothing in her way. Even 
her clothes I have got ready secretly. Come with me 
to the Eeverend Mother. 1 want her to be taken in at ! 
once — this week — to-morrow. I am in torture till she 
is beyond hearing what is said of her.” | 

I 

“ Would she fall in with your plans ? ” 

“ Is it Julia ? ” The grandmother smiled faintly. | 
“ She always listened to me since she was a little chEd. j 
She trusts my love for her. There is nothing in the | 
world to hold Julia. She isn’t made for the things i 
other girls are made for. Don’t you see that she 
grows more and more unlike them every day she 
lives ? ” ; 

“ I have opposed your plans for her all through, as I 
you know,” said the priest, slowly, “because I could 
find no evidence of a religious vocation. I was afraid 
that, like others before her, she might mistake a passing 
unhappiness for a religious vocation.” 

“She had no unhappiness,” said the grandmother, i 
wincing. “What unhappiness could come to Julia? 


A HARBOUR OF REFUGE 


243 


I sheltered her, as the hen the chicken under her wing, 
till that hour when I let Mr. Murty come into the 
house. She took no harm from him. I don’t blame 
Mr. Murty. I thought he was getting fond of her, so I 
made Denis speak to him. I knew nothing could come 
of it. Even if he thought of marrying her, I have never 
known good to come of unequal marriages. And he 
didn’t think of it, or would he have gone away ? As 
for her, poor child, she thinks no man would look at 
her to love her. They told her when she was a child 
that she was ugly, because she wasn’t fat and fair and 
bonny like her sisters. She believes it to this day. If 
you told her otherwise she’d think you were mocking 
her.” 

“ Let me think,” the priest said. 

He turned from the imploring eagerness in her face 
and went to his bookcase, where he stood with his back 
to her, staring at the shelves without seeing them. He 
was thinking hard, asking dumbly for light. 

At last he came back. 

** You say Julia is ready ? ” 

‘‘It will be no shock to her, not like other girls, 
who have to leave friends and gaieties. I have seen 
them, even when they had the call, go as though the 
heart-strings were being torn from them. Julia, my 
lamb, has never laid much hold upon the earth. She 
spends nearly all her days at the Convent now. It 


244 


JULIA 


won’t be so much of a change to go there altogether. 
If she enters now she might be received at Easter.” 

“ What a hurry you are in ! ” 

The old woman laid one hand upon her breast. 

There is something here, Father,” she said. I’ve 
been a strong woman all my life — never had ache nor 
pain. It is often women like me it attacks. If Julia 
was safe in the Convent I’d go and show it to the 
doctor.” 

My poor child ! ” 

There was an anguish of compassion in Father 
J ohn’s face ; but she looked away from it. 

It’s nothing,” she said, to what I’ve had to 
endure in my mind, since I heard they were talking 
about Julia. Let us go. Eeverend Mother won’t think 
it sudden. She has always known that Julia was for 
them.” 

After their interview with the Eeverend Mother 
which was plain sailing enough — it was true that the 
nuns had always known Julia O’Kavanagh was to be 
theirs, and they had been training her with a view to 
the boarding-school for young ladies, which the 
Eeverend Mother had it in her mind to establish — 
they parted at the doorstep of the Convent, Father 
John turning towards the church, Mrs. O’Kavanagh 
taking her homeward way. 

“I’ve to reconcile Denis,” she said. “But sure 


A HARBOUR OF REFUGE 245 

I don’t mind that now the matter’s settled. God bless 
you, Father, for the help you’ve given me 1 I don’t care 
how soon the doctors have me in their hands now; 
although, if they’d let me, I’d rather go to my grave 
without being cut and hacked about.” 

She went off so cheerfully and briskly that no one 
could have suspected the wolf gnawing at her vitals. 
Her eyes once more were bright and brave, without the 
film of suffering that had lain upon them when the 
priest first saw her. 

“There goes a hero,” he said to himself, as he 
watched her out of sight. 

Just as she entered the boreen leading up to the 
Keep some one stepped from behind a thorn-tree right 
in her path. 

It was Joe Quinlan; but Joe in eclipse, somewhat 
unkempt and careless, certainly leaner than of old, with 
a curious haggardness that gave character to a face she 
had always thought meaningless. 

He held out his hand, but she did not take it.| 

“ What do you want with me, Joe Quinlan ? ” she 
asked, and her direct gaze was one of hostility and 
challenge. 

She had asked herself who the enemy could be 
that had defamed Julia. She could think of none 
except the Quinlans. There had been the encounter, 
too, between Joe and Mr. Murty. Upon such a basis 


246 


JULIA 


might not the whole wicked story have been con- 
structed? Her eyes looked at him as though they 
would pierce him through ; but his did not fall before 
hers, although they looked haggard and melancholy 
enough to have made her pity him if she were not so 
engrossed with her own troubles. 

‘‘I've come to ask you," he said, looking down 
with a new humbleness at his rejected hand, “ whether 
Julia might be kinder to me if I was to ask her 
now." 

She did not pretend to misunderstand him. The 
moment was too tense for any subterfuges. 

“ You mean," she said deliberately, “ the talk about 
Julia ? " 

“Ay," he answered, and his face flushed. “I mean 
that. I thought you'd have heard it." 

Her eyes were blue steel. If he had been the guilty 
one they would have stabbed him through. 

“Tell me now, Joe Quinlan," she said. “Do you 
know who it was started the black slander about my 
girl ? Answer me, as there's a God in heaven ! " 

He lifted his hanging head, and his face caught the 
passion of hers. 

“ My God ! " he answered, “ as there's a God in 
heaven, if I knew the one that made it Td kill him ! 
Ay, if it was a woman, even, I think I’d do black 
mui’der on her ! ” 


A HAEBOUB OF REFUGE 247 

They stood facing each other for a space in which 
one might have counted ten seconds. 

Then Mrs. O’Kavanagh held out her hand. 

‘‘Forgive me, Joe Quinlan,” she said. “You’re a 
better man than ever I thought you.” 

“I never liked any girl but Julia,” he said. “I’d 
take her with only the dress she stands up in.” 

“Ay,” she answered. “And this is the moment 
you took to ask for her ! ” 

There was a word of appreciation in her voice. 
Nowhere is scandal against a girl less likely to be 
forgotten than in Ireland ; nowhere is marriage so well- 
nigh impossible for a girl who has been “talked about.” 

“ I never was fit for her,” he said, with an incredible 
humility. “If she’U only look at me now. I’ll fight 
the world for her.” 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh put her hand on his shoulder. 
For once he saw how beautiful a thing motherly love 
could be, since her face was motherly towards him. 

“ God forgive me, my poor boy,” she said, “ for so 
misjudging you. May He send you happiness, Joe. 
But Julia is not for you nor another man. Julia goes 
to the Convent on Thursday.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


NEW LIGHTS 

All the world seemed going wrong to Mary’s view. 
Even a good hard morning with Flora brought her 
none of the old healthy joy. Her pursuits, and they 
were many, lost their zest. She found no comfort, 
whatever way she looked. At Lacklands Helen Grace 
was fighting her battle, with days of quiet sanity spent 
in her garden ; and now and again an hour of insanity, 
when she had to fly to Mary for help lest she should 
fling herself at the children’s feet, and scream to them 
with the terror of a frightened child to take her out of 
the black, terror-peopled night which was the world 
without them. 

At such moments Mary felt as if she were holding 
her friend by the two hands back from some abyss of 
madness. There were times when she had it in her 
mind to tell the daughters what their mother was 
enduring. There must be some ruth in their hearts, if 
only she could find it. She had never troubled herself 


NEW LIGHTS 


249 


to be gracious with them. She was not the best 
person to approach them. Yet, if she were to do it 
humbly, perhaps they would listen. 

Then her friend’s paroxysm would pass. She would 
be brave and patient once more. She would forbid any 
revelation to the children. What was any suffering 
of hers compared with the possibility that she might 
be a shadow on their happiness ? 

Julia had slipped quietly into her Convent. Mary 
could not approve of convents, but she went to see 
Julia and was witness of the peace in her eyes. The 
nuns were so good to her. Her face, in the black, 
close-fitting cap and floating veil of the postulant, had 
lost the scared look it had worn of late. 

“It is so good to have it all settled for you,” she 
whispered to Mary. 

There was no word from Jim Dacre. Day after 
day passed and there was none. At last Mary, who 
must be doing something, wrote. Had he not let her 
look inside the deep heart of love that he had for his 
mother ? 

“ All our thoughts are with you,” she wrote ; “ and 
with her. God send the best. We are waiting anxiously 
for news.” 

She signed herself “Always your friend,” and 
waited, but still not a word came. 

Her father fretted and fumed, complained of his 


250 


JULIA 


late pupil’s incivility. He had a new applicant for a 
place in his office, young Adair Knox, Lord Kilma- 
creddan’s son. He was a more satisfactory person 
from Mr. Craven’s point of view, more ready to model 
himself on the Irish land-agent as Mr. Craven con- 
ceived him. Jim Dacre would learn no more from 
him than the office routine. In the bigger affairs of 
the agency he had his own ideas, and was obstinate 
about them. ^*He may do for England,” said Mr. 
Craven, contemptuously. He would not do for us.” 
Then that domesticity of his, that readiness to hold 
his wife’s wools while she wound them, to be at Mary’s 
beck and call, made Mr. Craven vaguely suspect Jim’s ! 
manliness. The aversion of the Celt for domesticity 
has imparted itself to the Anglo- Celt, as his less 
admirable qualities have a way of doing. 

At last word came, not from Jim, but from Jim’s 
brother Aylsmere. Lady Lumley’s malady had de- 
veloped itself as malignant small-pox. They had 
tried to keep Jim from her, but she had raved for 
Jim in the fever, and he would not be kept. The 
father also had been so exposed to the infection 
that the doctors did not argue with him when he 
would not be driven from her bedside. 

'' I am shut away from them all,” wrote Aylsmere, 

“ since I am tied to my regiment, and my suspense is 
very great. This letter ought to have been written 


NEW LIGHTS 


251 


some days ago — Jim sent me word over the telephone — 
but you can understand, my dear sir, the trouble of 
mind which prevented my writing. He asks your 
pardon for his absence without leave ; and when it is 
safe for liim to return he hopes to do so.’’ 

Mary wandered out restlessly, having heard the 
contents of the letter. 

“Malignant small-pox,” said her father. “Dacre 
won’t be back for — Heaven knows how long. There is 
a long quarantine for the small-pox. And ten to one 
he will get it himself.” 

Mary felt her feet carrying her, where for con- 
solation but to Julia at the Convent ? It was the day 
before the wedding of the twins. Helen Grace was up 
to her eyes in preparations for the small wedding- 
breakfast for a few intimate friends. There was a 
pastry-cook from Dublin turning out the dishes. But 
there were a hundred things that only she herself could 
see to. And the packing fell entirely to her and Jane. 
That was something the brides could not be troubled 
with. 

Lady Lorimer’s smart maid was to join her mis- 
tress in Dublin. As for Mrs. Harry, she declared, 
dimpling and blushing, that since she could not afford 
a maid it was lucky Harry had all the sailor-man’s 
cleverness. It was true that Harry Lorimer was not 
to be despised as a needle-man, and could dam a 


252 


JULIA 


stocking with any woman. He professed himself quite | 
wilKng to add the duties of his wife’s maid to those of 
Commander of one of His Majesty’s ships. j 

Mary was glad that her friend was too busy to 
grieve over her own sorrows. The days and the month 
would be long enough for that; and to-morrow she 
would have time for the woes of others as well as her j 
own. ! 

But, somehow, Mary thought of J ulia at the Convent 
as a little well into which she could drop her griefs 
and none discover them, not even she herself, if she 
willed to forget them. She had been amazed at Julia. 
She had made demands from time to time on her | 
sympathy and understanding in matters which ought | 
by all laws to have been beyond her knowledge. And j 
the demands had been answered. She began to believe | 
that Julia’s mind and heart had depths out of reach of 
her soundings. 

It seemed quite easy to talk out her griefs to the 
slender, black -robed figure, sitting there with its hands 
in its lap, the eyes listening and comprehending. 
There was nothing unearthly about Julia, if she had 
chosen a life which seemed to the girl in love intoler- 
ably cold and far from warm domestic hearth-fires. 

But God is there,” said Julia, and He is stronger 
than the small-pox. And from what you tell me Lady 
Lumley is His servant, and so is her son.” 


NEW LIGHTS 


253 


She must have got it,” said Mary, in some of 
those wretched places she used to visit. Delicate as 
she was, there was nothing she shrank from doing 
where any one was sick or miserable. Her son said 
she was a saint.” 

And the saints have nothing to be afraid of,” said 
Julia, with a bright gravity. ‘‘ I shaU ask all the 
saints I know to watch over their sister-saint and her 
son. Do not be afraid. God and His angels are with 
them.” 

“ I envy you all those saints of yours,” Mary said 
impulsively. It must be good to have another world 
full of faces one knows already. Do tell me, Julia, 
are you really, really happy ? ” 

“ How could I fail to be ? ” answered Julia. “ I was 
always happy at the Convent. It is the very happiest 
place for girls like me.” 

Her eyes were momentarily veiled by her long 
lashes. She could not speak even to her friend 
of that little soreness in her heart of her own 
ugliness. How glad she was that the tiny square 
of red-framed looking-glass in the nuns’ cells only 
permitted one to see just the top of the cap and veil, 
and the slightest line of forehead. One need not then 
shudder at one’s yellow visage. Her own choice of a 
Convent would have been Carmel, where no one need 
ever see her. But she had found no repulsion in the 


254 


JULIA 


eyes of the nuns. There was none in the eyes of Mary 
Craven. And in the Convent she was safe from the 
male eyes that might glance at her and scorn her. 

“ I should be perfectly happy,” said Julia, if it 
were not that my father suffers. He is not reconciled 
to my being in the Convent. I don’t know how Gran 
got him to give his consent ; but he is not happy.” 

A little while ago Mary would have said, hotly 
that Julia’s place was by her father if he needed her ; 
that the law of nature was the law of God ; and much 
more to the same effect. But now she was silent 
She knew how the friends and neighbours whom Julia 
had been brought up amongst, who had been witnesses 
of her innocent and blameless life, had defiled her in 
their speech and their thoughts. How glad she was 
that Julia had escaped them ! 

‘‘ The Convent is the best place for girls like you,” 
she said softly, repeating Julia’s words, and wondered 
why a pained flush came to her friend’s cheek. 

‘‘What do you do, Julia ? ” she asked, after a while. 
“ What are your duties ? ” 

“ Well, you see, I am still at school myself,” Julia 
said mildly. “ Some time I hope to be very useful in 
the new boarding-school that we are going to open. 
But at present I am in the Infant School. I teach the 
infants to read. ‘ A cat sat on a mat ’ : they have 
learned that to-day. And then I have to amuse them. 


NEW LIGHTS 255 

And sometimes they fall asleep, and then I put them 
to bed/* 

^‘You like it?” 

“ Unless, when I think of my father, I am happy. 
They are such dear little things.** 

hope the Convent will fill out your cheeks a 
little,’* Mary said, touching one cheek that was hollower 
than it used to be ; and take those rings from under 
your eyes . . . and . . .*’ 

“You will see it will do wonders for me,” Julia 
said hastily. “ And now I must send you away, for 
that is my hell. Didn’t you hear the little tinkle ? I 
have a music lesson at the half-hour.” 

Mary walked home comforted. She had a thought 
that she might write again to Jim. He could not 
write to her, but she could write to him — a letter 
guarded and friendly, by which he would know that 
she was kind. The last day he had almost spoken. 
But since he had not altogether, she must never let 
him suspect she guessed his intention, unless, unless 
... he finished that broken speech. And then there 
need never be reticences between them any more. 

“I carried your brother’s news to Julia O’Kava- 
nagh at the Convent,” she wrote. “ She has set all her 
saints to praying for you, and for her. I confess I 
envied Julia her saints, true-blue Protestant though I 
am. She seemed very sure that Lady Lumley was safe 


256 


JULIA 


in the immediate keeping and protection of God. If I i 
were hard and presumptuous, as I used to be, I might I 
have asked her then where the saints came in. But 
there are more things in heaven and earth than even 
an Irish Protestant knows. You see, I have learnt so 
much, although I used to quarrel with you over your 
latitudinarianism. We look forward to the day when j 
we may hear from you, and pray that your brother i 
keep us informed of the news from the sick-room.’' I 

The letter, which would go straight to his hand, 
seemed to make a bridge between her and Jim. If he 
came back again, she would never, never, never, quarrel 
with him any more, even if he did ride round and 
open gates when they hunted, instead of taking the I 
jumps. Her mind made excuses for him. She mur- 
mured the word “ prudence ” half-shamefacedly to her- 
self. It was not a word she had ever held in respect, 
but she did her best now to exalt it. At least, he was 
not afraid of the malignant small-pox, and he was by 
his mother’s bedside. 

On the way home she met Sir James Langley, 
riding with a youth whom he introduced to her as 
Captain Steele of the Hussars, newly come to the 
barracks at Drumquin. 

“I have promised him some good hunting. Miss 
Mary,” he said. “I hope we’ll have a good open 
winter. Miss Craven hardly ever misses a run,” he 


NEW LIGHTS 


257 


said, turning to Captain Steele. “ When she went out 
with us first, she was a little girl on a pony, with a 
velvet cap and her hair streaming over her shoulders. 
I’m proud of her, so I am. By the way, what news 
of Dacre ? ” 

“Apropos of hunting,” said Mary, with a faint 
smile. “ There can’t be any news just yet. Sir James. 
Lady Lumley’s illness has proved to be malignant 
small-pox. Mr. Dacre is constantly with her, and is, 
of course, cut off from all communication with the 
outside world.” 

“Ah, that’s bad news — malignant small-pox! I 
hope poor Dacre won’t take it. Of course, his place is by 
his mother’s side. Still . . . common prudence. . . .” 

Captain Steele listened attentively. “ If you 
mean Dacre, Lord Lumley’s younger son,” he said 
— “ his brother, Aylsmere, is a chum of mine — 
prudence won’t weigh much with him. He’s a head- 
strong fellow. Did he never tell you how he went 
into a quicksand after a dog ? Knew jolly well 
what he was doing, too. He was nearly gone when 
they dragged him out, the dog — a little King Charles 
belonging to his mother — sitting on his shoulder and 
whimpering and shivering for all it was worth. He 
was hauled out with ropes after he had sunk nearly 
to his armpits. The odd thing was that he kept a 
cigarette between his teeth all the time — said he knew 

s 


258 


JULIA 


he’d be pulled out. All the same, it was rather a 
nasty squeak.” 

Mary listened to this recital with an amazed face. 
“He represented himself so differently,” she said, 
looking to Sir James. “ He was always talking about 
prudence. He wouldn’t take the jumps.” 

“ Oh, I’ve seen him take the jumps,” said Sir 
James. “He was beside me on one occasion — you 
weren’t out that day — and he didn’t jump like a man 
without practice, either. Of course, you used to run 
away from him. I remember now that young Murty 
O’Kavanagh said to me once that Dacre professed more 
prudence than he practised. Perhaps he wanted to 
discourage you. Miss Mary. You are rather daring 
sometimes, you know.” 

“ He’s a very good man to hounds,” Captain Steele 
said placidly. “So is old Lumley. There isn’t a 
pluckier rider for a man of his weight in England. 
Jim hunted with him when he was six years old.” 

Mary said nothing. She was learning new aspects 
of Jim Dacre. One was, that he had positively played 
tricks upon her — he, the solidly built, imperturbable 
Englishman, whom, with the arrogance of her Irish 
birth, she had written down as destitute of the 
humorous sense. He had played tricks on her; suc- 
cessfully, too ; and the curious thing was that Mary 
did not resent it. 


CHAPTER XXll 


SEVEN SWORDS 

The wedding was over, and the brides had departed 
amid a shower of confetti. The guests had bidden 
farewell to Lady Grace. 

‘'You look tired,” said one and another. “You 
look as if you needed rest.” 

“I shall have plenty of time for rest now,” she 
answered. 

And only Mary Craven caught the note of despair 
in the voice. She was going too; she had not been 
asked to remain. 

“I will come to-morrow, Helen, to see how you 
have slept,” she said. 

One other person was perturbed by Lady Grace’s 
looks. 

“ Get to bed, for goodness’ sake, Helen, and 
sleep,” Sir James Langley said. “ You look tired to 
death.” 

“ I am tired to death,” she answered. “ But I can’t 


260 


JULIA 


go to bed at five in the afternoon. I have a good 
many things to do before I sleep.’* 

'^Let me stay, Helen,” said Mary Craven at her 
elbow. 

''Hot this afternoon, Mary. Come to-morrow, as 
early as you will.” 

The friend and the old lover went away sadly. 
They would have gone more sadly if they could have 
seen Helen Grace when no eyes were upon her. 

There was something she had to keep to herself. 
No one must ever know it but herself. How she had 
lived through those hours since she had known it was 
unimaginable. 

The evening before, the last evening that she was 
to have the children, had had a sweetness of its own. 
The mother had fought the battle for the children 
against herself, had learnt renunciation and found 
peace. This last evening, when she had given them 
up altogether, a new sweetness had come to the spirit 
worn out by conflict; peace had entered the heart 
emptied of happiness. She felt that she had nothing 
more to suffer. But at least the children would be 
safe and happy. Since that was so, could she grudge 
them the pain any more than she grudged them her 
anguish which gave them birth? She had lived for 
the children, and now that they no longer needed her, 
what did it matter whether she was happy or unhappy ? 


SEYEN SWOEDS 


261 


They were sorry to leave her — the poor children — 
she was sure of that. In her new humility, she 
wondered how she had ever thought it possible to 
follow them into their new lives. She had learned to 
be content with lesser things, and was piteously 
grateful to them for any consideration they showed her 
during these last hours. She hardly even winced when 
one or the other adverted to a lover-like speech of one 
or other bridegroom, to the effect that his beloved had 
never known love or care till he came; nor did she 
wonder what foolish pretence had evoked the speech. 
Such things were the small coin of lovers. How many 
men had said the like to how many maids since the 
world began? As though any tenderness could be 
more omniscient, more desirous of omnipotence, than 
the mother’s ! 

The last evening had been quietly restful. To- 
morrow they would be gone; but they would come 
again. There was the little rosy Hope in the Pandora’s 
box of her sorrows. There might be years to wait, yet 
they would come again. She would keep the hearth 
light burning for them. They would come home from 
the tropical countries, they and their husbands, and, 
perhaps, their little children, to find Lacklands, swept 
and garnished, waiting for them. She and Jane would 
wait together. She had no illusions about Jane. 
Jane’s love was not for her, but for the children ; still 


262 


JULIA 


she could love Jane, and find comfort in her because of 
their common love. 

Then, after she had tucked her two little brides 
away, bidding them sleep sweetly till their marriage- 
morn, she came back to the drawing-room, where her 
two sons, as she called them, with gentle gaiety — Sir 
Patrick Lorimer might easier have been her husband, 
being indeed a few years older than she — were waiting 
to bid her good night. 

They were eating a dry biscuit, drinking their 
whisky and soda, with a serious air. As she came in 
she had an odd sense that they had been talking of her, 
that they had come to a decision regarding her. 

She was quite right. hTo sooner had she come in 
than Sir Patrick took her by her two slender hands. 

“We have been talking about you, Harry and I,” 
he said. “ Helen, you have been too heroic ; you have 
been hiding something from us. You have been 
sacrificing yourself for your children, as every one says 
you have always done.’' 

“ In what way ? ” she asked, with a forlorn attempt 
at gaiety. 

“ You have been pretending that you can do with- 
out your girls. The spirit of self-sacrifice in women 
often causes a deal of needless suffering. I confess I 
looked forward to your being with Ehoda. The life 
will be new to her ; she will have a thousand calls 


SEVEN SWORDS 


263 


upon her which she has no idea of. I had looked for- 
ward to your helping her, sparing her, as you have done 
all your life. It was a blow to me when she told me 
that you would not consent to alter your life, that your 
house and garden and the friends you had made were 
too dear to you to be left.” 

“ I, too,” said Harry Lorimer. “ I thought you 
would be with us when you were not with Ehoda. 
Violet is a tender, unpractical child. How is she to do 
without you ? ” 

“We are a pair of selfish fellows,” went on the 
elder man, gravely, “ for we will not take your ‘ No,’ 
Helen. Perhaps it was never really a willing ‘No.’ 
Perhaps you thought that they were better in the new 
life starting unaided. You have done your best, but 
you have looked broken-hearted.” 

“ Take time to think,” said the other bridegroom, 
eagerly. “ We do not sail tiU October. Plenty of time 
for you to make arrangements and preparations. You 
can join us at Brindisi. Get rid of Lacklands and 
make your home with us.” 

“ I will think about it,” said Helen Grace, with 
what she felt must be a horrible grimace instead of a 
smile— “ a difficult smile that hurt half of her mouth,” 
as a modern poet has it. 

She thought in a dazed way of a picture she had 
seen in the corridor of the Convent, of the Mother of 


264 


JULIA 


God with seven swords in her heart, and said to herself 
that she had worse things to bear, since the Mother of 
God knew her Son’s love. Then in her humble heart 
she cried out for pardon. Would not the Mother of 
God have chosen the seven swords for herself, if but 
her Son might have gone free ! And her children went 
free. Beautiful, heartless, soulless, yet they were her 
children, although they slew her. 

Her two sons said good night, kissing her tenderly 
on the cheeks, and bidding her remember that they 
expected her to join them in October at Brindisi. Sir 
Patrick would look up some friends of his who were 
coming out from Tilbury about that time. He would 
write to them so that they might meet her in London, 
and make everything easy for her. 

How good they were, those sons ! How anxious for 
her to be with them ! She remembered how she had 
felt about other women when they had paraded their 
sons before the mother of mere girls. “ Little girls are 
very well in their way,” some one had said to her with 
a malicious intention ; “ but I never can think a woman 
is really satisfied till she has brought a man into the 
world.” 

The shaft had not gone home. She had never 
wanted a boy ; her girls had been enough. They were 
as exacting as any boy. They were brilliant and 
variable and uncertain as the wind. Perhaps, if^they 


SEVEN SWOEDS 


265 


had been gentle, unselfish, unexacting little feminine 
creatures, they would not have had so much from her 
and from Jane — poor Jane ! who like herself had given 
them all, and like herself had been betrayed. 

Harry had come running back before she could put 
up the bar on the outside shutters of the half-glass 
garden door by which they had gone. 

“ J ane is to come, of course,” he had said. “ They 
can’t do without J ane. She must get used to the ways 
of the new world. Good old Jane ! many a fine feast 
she made us in the old days. What fun it will be to 
see Jane among the Chinese! We’ll marry Jane to a 
gentleman with a pigtail. They make the best of 
husbands.” 

To be sure, Jane must come,” she had answered, 
with the hard, mechanical smile. 

You are an angel, mater,” he said, “ and I don’t 
deserve half my luck. Trust me to take care of her.” 

And then, after an honest schoolboy hug, such as he 
had often given her before, he had gone leaping out 
into the darkness, and she had heard him burst into 
singing as he went — into a rich, joyous trolling that 
made the birds, old married folk by now, wonder at 
who could be singing of weddings so late in the year. 

She had bolted and barred, and drawn down the 
blinds after he had gone. Of late, in her need, she 
had had recourse to her old friend. Sir John Wardell, 


266 


JULIA 


and he had given her a sedative for her nerves, some- 
thing that enabled her to look her troubles sanely and 
quietly in the face — something that at this moment 
kept her from the abyss which she dimly apprehended 
as not very far off. 

When she had taken it she lay down in her bed 
and stared out into the moonlight, seeing her life and 
the things that had happened to her, facing the 
incredible fact that it was by her children’s will and 
choice she was to be cut off from them. Before she 
had taken the draught her impulse had been to fling 
herself face downward on the floor, to tear her hair and 
her flesh, to suffer like the primitive creature, flinging 
off all the restraint of character and habit and tradition. 
For she felt like a tigress robbed of her young, and 
would have suffered in the manner of the beast. 

Wonderful, wonderful, that the body should so 
control the soul and will. Those two tablespoonfuls 
of colourless liquid, from a common medicine bottle, 
“ One-eighth part to be taken when necessary,” had 
worked a miracle. They had cast out wild beasts. 

After a time she even slept. She was by her 
daughters’ bedsides first in the morning, and found 
them rosily asleep. She let up the spring blinds with 
a rush. 

' What, lamb ! What, lady ! What, slug-a-bed ! ’ ” 
she said, quoting from the lovers’ drama of all time. 


SEVEN SWORDS 


267 


Keitlier Ehoda nor Violet knew the quotation. 
They had dispensed with as much book-learning as 
possible, and were as contemptuous of her ecstasies 
over the things she read as of her love of gardening. 

But they understood better when she bade them 
look forth on the lovely morning they had for their 
weddings. The sun was shining from a brilliant sky. 
August wore the regal colours ; heather and gorse on 
the purple hill, the white gold of harvest on the 
fields, purple loosestrife and meadow orchis, lavender 
cornbottles, yellow ragweed and dandelion in all the 
hedges. 

She dressed them herself, combing their pretty 
hair, drawing each curl to its fullest extent and letting 
it spring back again, lingering over her task, till they 
reminded her laughingly that they would be late at 
the church. 

“And just imagine what frantic bridegrooms!’* 
she said ; and wondered that they did not cry out at 
her pretence of merriment, which must sit ghastly on 
her eyes and mouth. 

“ I have never seen hair,” she said, “ that was 
exactly like the brown Venetian beads with underlying 
gold in them, except the hair of my girls.” 

She had done everything for them with her own 
hands. She would have had Jane to assist her, but 
Jane had refused brusquely. 


268 


JULIA 


*^And a good thing too,” said Violet. “Jane is 
clumsy. Her hands are too coarse to handle these,” 
looking down at her white silk and chiffon with a sigh 
of rapture. 

“ She always grumbles so much,” said Khoda. “ I 
should not like to have any one so ill-conditioned as 
Jane near me on my wedding-day. Oh yes, I know, 
she is excellent at heart ; but I’d rather have a less 
excellent person who was pleasanter externally.” 

And at last they were gone, calling back cheerful 
farewells from amid the showers of confetti — promising 
to write from London — the most radiant brides, with 
apparently not a regret for anything they had left 
behind. 

“I should have liked a few decent tears,” said 
Mary Craven, angrily, as she walked the little distance 
that separated Lacklands from her own home with Sir 
James Langley. 

She was always resolving to hold her tongue about 
Helen’s daughters, since she could find nothing good to 
say of them, and as constantly being goaded into 
breaking her resolutions. 

“They haven’t learnt the way of tears yet,” Sir 
James said wisely. “Perhaps it is the thing they 
need.” 

“ I wish she had let me stay with her,” Mary went 
on. She need have no reservations with this old 


SEVEN SWORDS 


269 


friend. I 'thought she had become reconciled; but 
there is no comfort in her face to-day. I wonder if she 
will sleep at all ? ” 

It was as well for those loving friends that they 
could not look upon Helen Grace when she had with- 
drawn to her own room and locked the door upon 
herself. For once she gave way to the agony of 
bereavement that possessed her; for once there was 
no merciful intervention of Sir John’s miraculous 
draught. The moon looked in on her lying on the 
floor, with her arms stretched out in the attitude in 
which we all receive the Cross when it is laid upon 
us. The sunrise found her so, cold and rigid, and 
pierced through her numbed consciousness with its 
unwelcome warmth till she came back to life and took 
up the things of life again. For those hours, eight or 
ten, maybe, she fought with wild beasts at Ephesus. 
Hot then, nor for long enough afterwards, was comfort 
or help vouchsafed to her. But after that night she 
learned a dumb resignation, more piteous than any 
railing upon her destiny could have been. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE CONSPIRATOKS 

The autumn went by slowly and heavily to nearly all 
the people with whom this story is concerned. 

For Mary Craven almost the worst of her fears had 
been realized. Jim Dacre had taken the small-pox. 
His mother had just lived through it, and was picking 
up very slowly at San Eemo, where her husband went 
in deadly terror lest she should discover her favourite 
son’s peril and lose what little progress she had made. 

So long as she was in quarantine it was easy 
enough to satisfy her about Jim’s absence. But as 
soon as she was declared free of the infection she 
began to wonder and complain. 

“Why doesn’t my boy Jim come to me?” she 
asked. “ It isn’t like Jim to keep away.” 

The recurrence of these complaints almost drove 
poor Lord Lumley mad. He was no diplomatist, and 
it was fortunate that the haggardness of his aspect and 
the dimmed ruddiness of his face, which looked as 


THE CONSPIRATOKS 


271 


though a thick grey dust had been deposited on it, 
could be explained by the anxiety he had endured on 
his wife’s account. 

It was the morning of a bad bulletin when Lady 
Lumley’s thoughts began to take a direction which 
was the last straw, so far as the poor gentleman was 
concerned. 

“ You’re not deceiving me, Carrington ? ” she said, 
looking straight^ into her spouse’s honest face. Jim 
wasn’t with me when I was at the worst, was he ? 
I sometimes have an idea that he was. Are you 
keeping anything from me ? Jim’s not ill ? Is he 
dead, Carrington? Oh, if Jim’s dead, don’t keep it 
from me ! ” 

The terror in her face communicated itself to her 
husband. 

“Good God! no, Alicia,” he said. “Don’t talk or 
think of such things. Jim dead ! God forbid ! Well 
have Jim to close both our eyes. Why shouldn’t he, 
Alicia ? Jim’s only twenty-nine.” 

“ Then why does he keep away ? ” 

Lord Lumley was not a man of resource, but he 
had thought beforehand over this difficulty when it 
should arise. There was nothing for it but a lie. It 
had been a dose to swallow. The Adam’s apple in his 
throat stood out visibly. 

“ We didn’t want to worry you, Alicia,” he said ; 


272 


JULIA 


‘‘ but, as a matter of fact, Jim’s broken his leg hunting 
in Ireland. Given his right wrist a nasty sprain, too,” 
he went on. 

His mind was in a tumult. He was conscious that 
the explanation, if enough for the moment, would not 
long pass muster. He waited in terror to hear his 
wife ask why Jim had not written by somebody 
else’s hand. Fortunately, she did not at the moment. 
For the moment, her terror about her son and her 
relief at his father’s reassurance had been enough to 
exhaust her. 

Presently she fell asleep, and Lord Lumley stole 
away to think out things. To carry on the game it 
would be necessary for some one to pretend letters 
from Jim. Even if Jim died — Lord Lumley was a 
shade greyer, more haggard because of the possi- 
bility — it would be necessary to keep it from Alicia 
till she was out of the wood. Who was going to help 
him? 

The need made Lord Lumley sharp-witted. It was 
not a thing a man could do very well, but a woman 
might be trusted. There was the daughter of Craven, 
the land-agent, with whom Jim had hunted. She 
might or might not be a good confederate. She was 
the only one Lord Lumley could think of. 

The result was a letter which two days later set 
Mrs. Craven knitting her brows as she read it at the 


THE CONSPIRATORS 273 

breakfast-table at Knockbeg. She did not speak of it 
till Mary had left the room. 

“I’ve had such an odd letter from Lord Lumley, 
Alick,” she said. “ It seems that Lady Lumley must 
be kept in ignorance of the boy’s illness. He writes that 
with great regret he has been compelled to deceive her, 
to tell her that Jim is lying here with a broken leg, 
and a sprained wrist, to explain his neither coming to 
her nor writing. Eor the present she is satisfied, but 
in a day or two she will ask why Jim has not written 
by somebody else’s hand. He asks Mary, in fact, to 
write the letters. I thought I would not pass on the 
letter to her till you had seen it. What do you think, 
Alick ? ” 

“ Of course, the poor woman can’t be let die. I 
only doubt his choice of a conspirator. Moll is not 
of the stuff of which conspirators are made.” 

“Then I shall give her the letter. By the way, 
Alick, Mary has taken young Dacre’s illness very much 
to heart. Don’t you think so ? ” 

“ Why, we all have. A young fellow amongst us 
in the very pink of condition a few weeks ago, and 
now at death’s door of a loathsome disease. Any one 
would feel it.” 

Mrs. Craven said no more. She was loth to place 
any burden she could carry herself on her husband’s 
shoulders. If he had not noticed the changed looks of 

T 


274 


JULIA 


his one precious girl she would not force the fact upon 
him till it was necessary. 

She found a quiet moment to hand the letter to 
Mary, and watched the changing colour with which the 
girl read it. 

Can you do it, Mary ? ” she asked. 

There will just be time before the post,’' Mary 
answered, consulting the business-like little watch at 
her wrist. 

^ If she had had time to think about it she might have 
accomplished her task worse. As it was, she felt as if 
she were caught into a struggle to save Jim’s beloved 
mother’s life for him. Her pen dashed over the note- 
paper in her fine, well-formed handwriting. She sent 
intimate messages from Jim, blushing deeply at her 
own audacity. How much she knew of his thoughts, 
after all ! When they had not been quarrelling, when 
there had been a little peaceful interval between them, 
he had talked to her as to his other self. 

She did not dare read over the letter, but dropped 
it into the letter-bag without reading it. She would 
have had no doubt of the literary success of her first 
attempt to deceive if she could have seen Lord Lumley’s 
face as he read the letter, or Lady Lumley’s as it was 
read to her. 

‘‘ Ah ! ” said the invalid. “ You don’t know what 
a relief that is, Carrington. I have been frightened 


THE CONSPIKATOKS 


275 


about Jim all the time. Presently he must come out 
here and be nursed, as soon as he can travel. Now, 
if nurse will bring me my beef-extract I think I can 
sleep.*’ 

** I felt like a murderer,” wrote Lord Lumley to 
Miss Craven that same afternoon; ^^but she had a 
longer and more refreshing sleep than any day since 
her illness. Will you write every day ? There is no 
good news to report yet of the boy.” 

A good many days had to pass before Mary could 
write her letters with any but the heaviest heart. At 
last came a chink of hope. 

“ The doctors think that he may just pull through.” 

When Lord Lumley wrote that he had no idea of 
the anguish of thankfulness it was going to awake in 
the recipient. 

Day after day the chink widened and brightened. 
Day after day the Gaudeamus became more jubilant 
in Mary’s letters. 

“ There will soon be no need for me to write any 
longer,” she wrote. Mr. Dacre feels so much stronger 
every day that he feels he can come to you in a little 
while to be made well. No one ever could make him 
well but you.” 

The next letter from Lord Lumley conveyed a 
startling proposal. 

Now that the danger is over,” he wrote, you’d 


276 


JULIA 


better come and help me to tell her the mischief we’ve 
been up to. You are the worse conspirator of the two, 
for you sent her messages out of her son’s mouth, and 
she received them undoubtingly. I never could have 
done it. She has always been a cut above me. Jim 
and she understand each other — always did. And I 
never can be grateful enough for the help you’ve 
given me. You see, you aren’t a strange young 
woman over there in Ireland. You’ve been through 
it with us. Come and help me through this most 
difficult part of all. Jim’s up, in his own room. A 
sight, I hear ; but, luckily, he’s not a girl — his face 
isn’t his fortune.” 

Mary carried the letter to her mother, who passed 
on some of the contents to her father. 

“ Moll won’t go,” said Mr. Craven, hopefully. 

Why, the first meet of the season is at the Tubber- 
more Cross Eoads next Wednesday. She’s never 
missed an open. She won’t see herself tied to Lady 
Lumley’s bathchair at San Eemo. Not she. She was 
looking at that filly of Gallagher’s. Fifty pounds he’s 
asking. I think I’ll give it to her for a birthday gift.” 

" Give her the fifty pounds to get some new frocks 
for San Eemo,” said Mrs. Craven, quietly. 

You think she’ll want to go ? ” 

think we should insist on her going. She’s 
taken things to heart, Alick, the trouble of her friends 


THE CONSPIKATORS 


277 


— young Dacre’s illness — and Helen Grace’s loneliness, 
and that O’Kavanagh child getting talked of and 
having to be hidden away in a convent. She doesn’t 
look the same. She’s rather sickened of the world 
about her, I fancy.” 

“ Sickened of the world ! Moll ! who was always 
so keen ? Why, now you speak of it, I believe I’ve 
known it all the time. Get her away — get her away 
as fast as ever you can! Change of air and scene, 
above aU, change of people. She’ll come back to us 
like a rose.” 

The next time he saw Mary her father looked at 
her and imagined her far worse than she was. She 
was really looking considerably brighter and better 
than she had done a few weeks earlier. 

Having made up his mind that her going was 
desirable, he thought he never could get her gone. 
He found a reason for his own presence in London. 
He had taken over the management of another estate 
besides Moyle, and he had to see the absentee landlord. 
A good, comfortable man, Mr. Craven pronounced 
him, who would not be imagining that he knew by 
instinct a business which it had taken other men a good 
many years to master ; who took his rents and asked 
no questions, and offered no absurd, unbusinesslike 
reasons why a wastrel should be kept on the estate, 
or an improving tenant pampered beyond all bounds. 


278 


JULIA 


Since Mr. Craven must be in London be would 
find it easy enough to accompany Mary to the end of 
her journey and deposit her. He would spend a 
couple of days in Paris on his way back. He had not 
had a holiday for so long that he was keen to be 
enjoying this one. He would hardly give Mrs. Craven 
time to expend the fifty pounds in procuring Mary 
some garments for the Kiviera, where so many fine 
birds were to be found even out of the season. 

Mary’s own desires were unexacting. She was not 
going to frequent the Casino, or to be a fashionable 
person in any sense of the word. She was to be with 
an invalid most of the time. Still, she was interested 
in her tailor-made travelling-dress, her simple evening 
gowns and walking-dresses and tea-gowns. She rather 
wondered at her mother’s prodigality. Hitherto Mary’s 
horizon in the world of dress had been pretty well 
bounded by the fit of a habit, the set of a tailor- 
made gown. She had not known what it was to 
delight in chiffon and soft silks, and thin, delicate 
woollens. 

How papa will grumble at so much luggage ! ” she 
said humorously, as her garments accumulated. The 
fifty pounds had long ago been joined by nearly fifty 
more. 

‘'We have been living out of the world,” Mrs, 
Craven said, “ but I used to be supposed to have taste 


TEE CONSPIEATOKS 279 

in dress. I can’t send my girl to the Eiviera looking 
like a rustic.” 

She had her justification in Mr. Craven’s eyes as 
he looked at Mary, fresh from her tailor’s hands, in 
a blue-grey tweed that matched the colour of her eyes, 
a long, elegant travelling-wrap, and a wide hat of the 
same blue-grey, with an eagle’s feather stuck through 
its ribbons. 

“ San Kemo can do you no more good than your 
journey to Dublin has done you,” he said. “Better 
stay at home, Moll, and go hunting with me next 
week.” 

But as they were already on the point of departure, 
with some of the superabundant luggage sent on before, 
his proposal could not have been meant to be taken 
seriously. 

He placed Mary in Lord Lumley’s hands; only 
that, and sped back to the County Kerry without 
spending those two days in Paris which he had 
promised himself. 

“I’ve left an inexperienced youth, young Knox, 
Lord KEmacreddan’s son, in charge of the office,” he 
explained to Lord Lumley. “While I am away he 
may be giving new leases and allowing reductions of 
rent, and handing over turbary rights, and even giving 
away the landlord’s ownership in the game. Can you 
wonder at my haste to be gone ? ” 


280 


JULIA 


'‘As a landowner, no,” answered Lord Lumley, 
politely regretful. 

He had taken a violent fancy to Mary at first sight, 
and was not altogether sorry that her father, excellent 
person as he was, could not remain. Besides, he 
wanted to get over that explanation with his wife, 
which he had postponed in the most cowardly fashion 
till he had Mary to assist him. 

He left her drinking tea by his wife’s sofa, and 
went off to a certain shop, where he could buy the 
Field and the Times two days old. He really meant 
to come back immediately, but he found an account 
of a mysterious disease among fox-hound puppies 
which interested him exceedingly. 

When he returned Mary was still by Lady Lumley’s 
sofa, but she was wearing a soft, closely clinging gown 
of cream woollen, with a little fur about the squarely 
cut neck and the hanging sleeves, in which she looked 
even more charming than when he had met her at the 
railway station. One glance at his wife told him 
that Mary had spared him the trouble of telling his 
story. 

“ To think of your being able to deceive me ! ” she 
said, with the soft laughter which he had not heard 
for long. "I never could have believed it of you, 
Carrington. But, after all, you could not have done 
it without this fellow-conspirator of yours.” She laid 


THE CONSPIRATOKS 


281 


a hand over Mary’s. Well, you are forgiven, both of 
you, because Jim is coming next week. He is hideous 
he says. Since we are such arch-deceivers we had 
better keep it from him that we have a charming 
young lady visiting us.” 


CHAPTER XX [V 


FUNERAL-BAKED MEATS 

The gold was thin on the autumn trees, little ‘‘ patines 
of fine gold,” like the coins on the forehead of an Eastern 
girl, tinkling in every breath of wind, when the news 
came that Sir Jasper was dead. 

The heir was bringing him home to lie with his 
fathers in the coffin fashioned of his own tree, as he had 
designed to lie. 

Sir Murty’s letter of directions to Mr. Craven might 
have been supposed to have the curtness of grief. The 
tree was to be cut down and made into an outer coiB&m 
The vault in Moyle Abbey was to be opened, and Sir 
Jasper’s place prepared by the resting-place of his wife. 
The funeral was to be fixed for a day in the following 
week, and word was to be given to Sir Jasper’s old 
friends and to the tenantry. 

‘‘ I wish Denis O’Kavanagh of the Keep to be one 
of the bearers,” was the closing paragraph of the letter. 
“ Will you make this wish known to him ? ” 


FUNERAL-BAKED MEATS 


283 


“ I suppose he knows nothing at all of what has 
been happening,” Mrs. Craven said, when her husband 
had read the letter aloud. 

I should say certainly not,” the agent answered. 

I wonder if, in the circumstances, it is any use my 
conveying the message to Denis ? ” 

Finally, he decided to give the message, and as he 
was passing the Keep called in about it. He watched 
Denis’s face narrowly as he mentioned Sir Murty’s 
wish, with an appearance of carelessness. 

Denis was looking grey and melancholy — there was 
no doubt of that — yet not as the agent had rather dreaded 
to find him, not as though he had suffered an intoler- 
able wrong at the hands of old friends and neighbours 
and was at war with his world. 

Indeed, on hearing Sir Murty’s message a pleased 
look strayed over a face grown wintry like the weather. 

It’s very kind of Sir Murty to remember,” he said. 
“ I shall be pleased to do as he wishes.” 

I don’t believe, Mary,” said Mr. Craven, to his one 
bosom friend and confidant, that he knows there was 
a scandal at all. There’s trouble in his face, but not 
that — not that. Whereas the old mother looks as 
though she were consumed.^' For once Mr. Craven was 
imaginative. Consumed, Mary, that’s the only word. 
I believe she has borne it all herself. I don’t think 
she is long for this world.” 


284 


JULIA 


''Dear me/' said Mrs. Craven, greatly distressed. 
" That fine, handsome old woman. Why, she looked as 
if she had years of life before her when I saw her last. 
I must have the phaeton and drive over to see her this 
afternoon.” 

"Do! YouTl find a change in her. I wonder if 
she has seen a doctor. The more I think over it the 
more I am persuaded that Denis knows nothing. Some- 
how, if Denis did know what we know, I can imagine 
that he would be a dangerous person. Those quiet 
people often are.” 

" What a pity Sir Murty couldn't have kept to his 
own class ! ” Mrs. Craven said ; and she had said the 
same thing many times before. 

If Mary and Sir Murty had only taken a fancy to 
each other, she thought, what a happy thing it would 
have been. And Sir Murty had seemed not at all ill- 
disposed to carry out her wishes. Whereas now she 
was afraid they were going to lose Mary. It would be 
nearly as sad as poor Helen Grace's tragedy. Only 
that Mary would never be lacking in love. 

And of course she would have Alick, and Alick 
would have her. They had sufficed for each other once. 
They must suffice again. And not for worlds must 
Mary know that her joy would be their desolation. 

A few days passed and Sir Murty was home with 
his melancholy burden. 


FUNEKAL-BAKED MEATS 


285 


The young fellow looks ill and haggard in his 
black clothes,” Mr. Craven reported. “ Upon my word, 

I believe he had grown fond of the old man. Many a 
man I have seen going to his father’s funeral looking 
happier. What do you think? He has written to 
Denis O’Kavanagh that he will send a carriage for him. 
He says it is O’Kavanagh’s place to be among the chief 
mourners.” 

Dear me ! He can’t suspect anything,” Mrs. Craven 
said uneasily. “ It will set all the talk going again.” 

“ In another direction. A man does not pay such 
honours to the father of the girl he has wronged.” 

“ Supposing he were in love with Julia ! ” 

“ He may have been ; but hardly to the point of 
marriage. Anyhow, the girl is out of his reach. I 
dare say it is the happiest ending for Julia.” 

The funeral was over. Every one had noticed the 
leanness and sadness of the heir and his depressed 
attitude as he stood by the grave, holding his black- 
banded hat so as to conceal his face when the cofi&n 
was lowered. 

Denis O’Kavanagh had accepted the carriage sent 
by Sir Murty, and had helped to carry the coffin. Ho 
one could say, looking at him in the black broadcloth 
kept exclusively for funerals, that he was unworthy to 
be among Sir Jasper’s chief mourners. He carried 
himself with a greater dignity than usual ; but even the 


286 


JULIA 


most envious had no stone to cast at Denis. In fact, 
Denis had always escaped the hostility which his 
mother’s superiority to her class had awakened. Denis 
had never had anything in his heart or on his tongue 
but kindness and helpfulness to those around him. 

No words passed between him and Sir Murty, who, 
after the funeral was over, went home to dinner with 
Mr. Craven. Sir Murty liked Mrs. Craven, and felt 
that the agent’s conversation, which was sure to be of 
everyday business matters, would be a tonic to him just 
now. He was sorry that Mary was away. But in 
Mary’s absence none could be more sympathetic and 
understanding than her mother. 

He was glad he had not gone back to a solitary 
meal at Moyle when he entered the drawing-room at 
Knockbeg, and found Mrs. Craven sitting beside a 
cheerful fire. He had come in alone, for some one was 
waiting to see Mr. Craven in his office. 

“ Dear me ! how cold you are ! ” Mrs. Craven said, 
taking his chilly hand in her own soft warm ones, and 
pressing it with motherly kindness. 

‘‘Yes, it’s rather a change from Algiers. It was 
sad coming home like that, too. I had hoped to have 
brought him back living, and to have kept him awhile. 
His death leaves me alone in the world.” 

“ Ah yes, ah yes,” Mrs. Craven said softly, not 
offering the conventional comfort. 


FUNERAL-BAKED MEATS 


287 


He had grown so fond of me, so grateful, poor old 
soul, for the least consideration on my part. He said 
once that his world had been empty before I came, and 
that I had filled it full.’' 

'' Poor dear old soul ! Poor dear, lonely old soul ! ” 
Mrs. Craven said, averting her eyes from Sir Murty’s 
quivering face. 

Then Mr. Craven came in, and the talk was of 
ordinary things, the gossip of the neighbourhood, and 
the affairs of the tenants, with a sprinkling of the 
affairs of the great world outside. And as they talked 
Sir Murty grew to look more cheerful, as though the 
world still held good things for him. He spoke of 
to-morrow. To-morrow he had a good many things to 
see to and set in order. The old light returned to his 
eyes as he spoke of to-morrow. 

To be sure, he is young yet,” thought Mrs.' Craven, 
** and he will form other ties. Oh, if only Mary was 
going to be at Moyle, where she could run in and out, 
where we could see her every day 1 ” 

It was quite late when Sir Murty left them. He 
had chosen to return to Moyle on foot, and as he 
walked along, looking over the quiet country, bathed 
in moonlight, he felt his mood so hopeful that he 
could hardly realize he was the mourner of a few 
hours ago. 

After all, he had come back to his own people. It 


288 


JULIA 


was not true that he had none of his kin in the world. 
There was Denis and Mrs. O’Kavanagh and Julia. He 
did not think of Kosy Quinlan’s daughters in this 
context any more than their grandmother would 
have done. The O’Kavanaghs of Moyle owed the 
O’Kavanaghs of the Keep reparation. They must 
accept him as their kinsman, and let him do what he 
would for them — dower the girls handsomely, for one 
thing. To be sure, he was going to ask them to give 
him even a closer claim than that old tie of kinship. 
Absence had made him sure of his own heart. And he 
had little doubt of the answer. He remembered Julia’s 
eyes, with little gold lights in their darkness under the 
sweeping lashes. Julia’s eyes ! At the thought he broke 
into a swinging stride; he would have sung aloud if 
the remembrance of the funeral had not checked him. 

He was in love with the thought of his own repara- 
tion. He thought on the Lord of Burleigh, on King 
Cophetua, and other persons of poetry, and rejected 
their cases as having any likeness to his own. 

“ Whenas in silks my Julia goes,” 

he said aloud, barely restrained from singing it out of 
pure joy. J ulia, in the garments of the station to which 
he would lift her — nay, replace her, for there could be 
no thought of lifting where Julia was concerned — would 
be more beautiful than any lady in the picture gallery 


FUNERAL-BAKED MEATS 


289 


at Moyle. She was Nature’s lady, and the nuns had 
done their part in teaching her the conduct and 
attributes of a lady. 

“Whenas in silks my Julia goes.” 

Suddenly from under a sycamore tree, which yet 
retained a rustling colony of leaves, and made a splash 
of shade black as ink on the moonlit road, a man 
stepped out. 

For an instant O’Kavanagh was unpleasantly 
startled. He had not even a cane for weapon, and 
the incident was suggestive of the old violent days. 
To-morrow — well, if a man looked to attain his 
heart’s desire to-morrow, it was enough to make a 
coward of him to see the possibility of losing to- 
morrow. 

He stepped back quickly; but almost immediately 
he perceived that the man’s air was pacific. His soft, 
slouched hat hid his face, but when he spoke Sir 
Murty had an idea that the voice was not wholly un- 
familiar. 

^‘You don’t remember me. Sir Murty,” said the 
man. “ Maybe you’ll recollect the evening you found 
myself and Julia O’Kavanagh in Moyle Abbey ? You 
knocked me down, and I deserved it ; but, after all 
it was foolishness of me and nothing worse. I had 
taken drink, and she was my cousin, and I was 

u 


290 


JULIA 


only trying to get a kiss from her. Many^s the glass 
of whisky IVe turned from since because of that 
nighf 

Sir Murty looked at him unfriendly. How dared 
the fellow talk of kissing Julia ! 

“Tm glad you’ve learned more sense/’ he said 
coldly, and would have passed on, only that Joe stood 
in his path and barred the way. 

“I haven’t done at all, sir,” he said. haven’t 
been waiting for you, standing out in the frosty night 
all the evening for that. It’s about Julia, sir. You’ll 
have heard what’s befallen her.” 

“ I’ve heard nothing. What do you mean ? ” 

O’Kavanagh’s face was startled. 

“ Only this, sir, that there was a deal of talk about 
you being in and out at the Keep, and at last the talk 
settled on Julia. At first ’twas no great harm, only 
that the old woman and Denis were plotting for you to 
marry Julia; and I think them that was busiest saying 
the like believed it the least. But it didn’t stop at 
that. Ko one could tell where it came from, the black 
lie about poor Julia. But it grew and grew till 
every one had it, and even them that knew her longest 
turned their backs on her, and the girls tossed their 
heads as they went by, and the boys, I’ve heard tell, 
grinned in her face. I never seen it myself ; it would 
have been worse for them if I had. Anyhow, they 


FUNERAL-BAKED MEATS 291 

made lier as black as God made her wliite. And not 
the priest himself could do anything or find where it 
came from. . . 

He paused for breath, and O’Kavanagh broke in 
agitatedly. 

“ My God ! he said, “ I never heard a word of it. 
Are you telling me the truth ? ” 

“I wish I was telling you a lie,” the other said 
dejectedly. ‘‘When first I heard it I was all for 
killing some one. But when day after day went by, 
and I could find no one to kill, and the story spread 
and spread, and them that pretended to disbelieve it 
before my face believed it behind my back, it seemed 
to wear me out like.” 

“They talked about Julia,” O’Kavanagh said in- 
credulously. “Of Julia! Why, wouldn’t any one 
have known that Julia was as white as snow ? Julia, 
who would hardly lift her eyes to look me in the face ! 
That innocent child I ” 

“ You might be the blackguard to betray the con- 
fidence they placed in you,” said Joe, roughly, with a 
change of mood. “I know nothing about you. If it 
was another girl I’d have nothing to say. But Julia! 
Why, my God! I’ve been in love with Julia since I was 
sixteen. It came on me sudden-like. Before that I 
was as impudent as any of them. I remember when 
I was a shaver that I called her ‘yellow face.’ The 


292 


JULIA 


beautiful little face of her, with the skin like a pansy ! 
Och, you did me wrong, sir, when you came. If you 
hadn’t come Julia might have liked me in time. I’d 
have altered myself for her sake.” 

The sense of Joe’s words reached O’Kavanagh 
slowly. It had come upon him with a shock that 
he had been accused of wronging Julia. At the 
beginning the calumny had been vague in his mind. 
His face, that had gone white in the moonlight, was 
stabbed in the cheek with sudden colour. He looked 
uncomprehendingly at Joe’s working face. 

“Why,” he said, “that is the most damnable lie 
that ever came out of hell ! I wonder even the Devil 
himself could have invented it. Julia is my kinswoman, 
as sacred to me as my sister. I always honoured and 
reverenced her.” 

“I believe you,” said Joe, impulsively, and un- 
clenched one of his hands to seize O’Kavanagh’s. 
“Sheris for neither of us now; but is there no way 
you can] right her? I thought once that you might 
marry her, though she was only a farmer’s daughter. 
You are a gentleman. You have education and riches, 
and people look up to you. Is there no way now that 
we can take the black stain off Julia’s name, so that 
she’ll golto heaven as white as she ought ? ” 

“ She is for neither of us now.” 

The phrase struck coldly on O’Kavanagh’s ear. 


FUNERAL-BAKED MEATS 293 

What did the fellow mean ? He had an odd reluctance 
to share with him his intentions as regarded Julia, yet, 
after all, he was honest. Apparently he was in love 
with Julia. Well, it was not possible for him to forbid 
the men among whom Julia had been brought up being 
in love with her, even though she was not for them. 
“ Poor devil ! said O’Kavanagh, catching sight of the 
look of suffering on Joe’s face. 

“ I will take the most effectual measures for 
silencing the slanderers,” he began, ^‘when Julia is 
Lady O’Kavanagh ” 

“Lady O’Kavanagh? She will never be Lady 
O’Kavanagh ! ” 

The expression in Joe’s face turned O’Kavanagh’s 
warm heart as cold as stone. What he had said rang 
in the air like a death-bell. 

“ My God ! she is dead,” he said, and his hands fell 
limply to his sides. “Julia is dead ! She would never 
live through a shame like that. Why did you not tell 
me before that she was dead. Or . . . dying ? ” 

“Ko. She’s neither dead nor dying,” Joe said 
gloomily. “ But she’ll never be Lady O’Kavanagh any 
more than she’ll be my wife. You must find some 
other way of righting her. That comes too late. Julia 
is in the Convent.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE FLOWN BIED 

O’Kavanagh never knew how he reached home, nor how 
he parted with Joe Quinlan. All night long he paced 
up and down the bedroom that had been Sir Jasper's, 
raging helplessly against the Power that had snatched 
Julia from him. The thought of Julia consigned to 
that living death (so he thought of it), her beautiful 
young limbs, her tender body, shut away between stone 
walls, not for him, not for any man, to wither and 
grow old, maddened him. 

Like most of the young men with whom he had 
been associated at Oxford, he had had no prejudices 
against the Catholic Church — on the contrary, he had 
predilections in her favour. He had said, with others, 
that if he could be anything but indifferent he would 
be of her fold. Her magnificent history, her tremendous, 
overpowering claims, the beauty and mystery of her 
services, appealed to all the poetry that was in his 
heart. If not of her, he was of her friends ; and the 


THE FLOWN BIRD 295 

environment of his life before he came to Ireland had 
been entirely a friendly one towards her. 

He had been amazed and contemptuous of the 
attitude of Irish Protestants towards Catholics and 
Catholicism. His friendship with Father O’Driscoll 
had begun in his revolt against the narrowness of his 
own class. 

But, after all, the drop of English blood in him 
the Oxford training, the life abroad, had not altogether 
eradicated the Irish Protestant. He was furious 
against the blind, irresponsible Power, as he called it, 
which had taken Julia in her young beauty and shut 
her away for ever from his arms. 

He remembered how he had felt that day when he 
had witnessed the espousals of the bride of Christ. He 
knew now why he had felt that revolt, that suffering. 
It was a mysterious presage of the day when his own 
bride should be snatched from his arms and hidden 
away from him for ever in a living grave. Strong as 
death, cruel as the grave — that was how he conceived 
the enormous massed power of the old Church with all 
the ages behind her, with all the battalions of heaven 
at her back. 

In his ignorance he thought of the convent as a far 
more irrevocable thing than any Catholic would have 
known it to be. It placed Julia as far away from him 
as though she were dead — farther, even, since he could 


296 


JULIA 


never think of her as his. It would have been a dreary 
comfort to think of her as dead. Beyond the grave 
his claim might follow her. He could have lain on 
her grave and called out to her that she was the one 
woman for him, that no other woman would ever be 
the wife of his bosom, the mother of his children. But 
now that dedication was impossible. Beyond the veil 
of the Convent a claim immeasurably greater than his 
pushed his poor human passion aside. 

Morning found him sleepless and still consumed by 
his fury. He glanced towards the bed where Sir 
Jasper’s coffin had lain, which yet bore the impress of 
its weight. 

Ah ! if he had not lingered^'out there in the South 
all those months, finding it impossible to leave the old 
man who was only glad in his presence, this need not 
have happened. Why could he not have written when 
he discovered that everywhere he went, among the 
orange-groves, under the date-trees, by the sapphire 
sea, under the sapphire heaven, Julia’s eyes, Julia’s soft, 
shy voice went with him ? Fool that he had been, to 
think that there was time for his sweet, leisurely 
wooing, while some devil was trying to blacken the 
splendour of her whiteness ! If he had written three 
months ago Julia might have been safe for him. How 
the Convent held her from him more securely than any 
earthly barrier could have done. 


THE FLOWN BIRD 


297 


He went out as soon as it was daylight, and walked 
through the wind which had sprung up in the night 
without his noticing it — walked a long way by roads 
strewn with twigs and branches. The walk did him 
good, freshened and revived him against his will. 
When he pulled up at last and looked at his watch he 
found it was eight o’clock, time for him to return home 
if he would not have an alarm raised, for he remem- 
bered now that he had not slept in his bed, and, 
that the household was not stirring when he left the 
house. 

As he passed through the village he ran up against 
Father O’Driscoll, who was just going into his own 
house. 

The priest greeted him with affectionate cordiality. 
They had barely spoken at yesterday’s funeral. 

« Why, Sir Murty, you are early out of doors ! 
Have you breakfasted ? ” 

‘‘Now you mention it,” Sir Murty said, with an 
unmirthful laugh, “ I believe I haven’t. I’ve been 
walking since half-past six. I’m just hurrying home, 
lest they should be looking for my body in the lake, 
for no one saw me leave the house, and, to tell you the 
truth, I didn’t go to bed last night. I’m afraid I’m 
rather a scarecrow.” 

“A good meal will put that to rights. I’m just 
going to have my breakfast. Come and share it. 


298 


JULIA 


111 send word over to Moyle. Afterwards I’d 
advise you to lie down on my bed and have a good 
sleep.” 

O’Kavanagh was worn out by the tempests of the 
night. He could not look on the priest as the embodi- 
ment of that Power which had taken Julia from him 
as he would have a few hours earlier. He wanted 
food and rest. He wanted to know more of all this 
business about Julia. The sympathy and fatherly 
kindness in the priest’s face comforted him even while 
he turned away from the comfort. 

“ There’s more wrong here,” said Father O’Driscoll 
to himself, “than natural grief for Sir Jasper.” 

While they breakfasted he asked no questions, only 
talked quietly and cheerfully of everyday, safe subjects. 
But when breakfast was over, and they had drawn their 
chairs to the fire, something compelling came into 
Father O’Driscoll’s face. 

“My dear lad,” he said, “you are in trouble. 
What is the matter ? ” 

O’Kavanagh did not think any longer of withhold- 
ing his tale. He poured out the whole trouble about 
Julia. Incidentally he betrayed a good deal of his 
rage against the Church which, as he conceived, had 
done him so great a wrong; and the priest listened, 
with one of his smiles that seemed to contain a world 
of patience and tolerance. 


THE FLOWN BIRD 


299 


“I was never unfriendly to the Catholic Church, 
as you know,” O’Kavanagh went on, stammering. “ In 
fact, it was rather the other way about. How I see 
what her enemies mean when they say that she is the 
destroyer of human happiness, the breaker of human 
ties, the ” 

“My dear boy,” interrupted the priest, “despite 
your greater enlightenment you believe that we make 
nuns of girls against their wills.” 

“ How are they to know ? They go in because 
some trouble has overtaken them, because they are too 
young to know their own minds. It is no use to 
repent afterwards, for the Convent is irrevocable.” 

“ nothing is irrevocable except death — and, yes, 
our vows. But few nuns take solemn vows. They 
can always leave the Convent; in most cases they 
may marry if they will. No Superior would want 
to keep an unwilling nun. You don’t know how 
an unsuitable one can set a Convent by the ears. 
My dear boy, there is nothing between you and Julia 
except Julia’s will, if that is set against you.” 

The whole fabric of terror and grief seemed to have 
crumbled away. O’Kavanagh stood up with a move- 
ment of his shoulders as though he flung off from them 
the Old Man of the Sea. His face shone with a sudden 
delight. 

“And Julia loves me! I am sure that Julia loves 


300 


JULIA 


me !” he cried. “ Oh, what a nightmare you have taken 
off my heart ! 

If Julia loves you,’' the priest said, with a faint 
twinkle, “Keverend Mother will have no use for her. 
The question is whether she does love you. You don’t 
expect me to go and tell a postulant at the Convent 
that a young man, and a heretic at that, wants her to 
come out in order that he may marry her. I have not 
heard from Eeverend Mother that J ulia has no vocation.” 

“ She went in because she thought I had left her, 
because the stories against her broke her heart.” 

'' She knew nothing of the stories. Do you think 
we would let Julia know ? If she had heard the 
stories I think she would have died of them. Julia 
O’Kavanagh is one of the compensations that fall to 
a priest’s lot. Do you remember the old Pope in ‘ The 
Eing and the Book ’ ? Julia is one of my flowers that 
grow near God. The question is, if you are worthy of 
Julia.” 

“ Not worthy,” O’Kavanagh said humbly. “ I 
don’t know the man who would be. But I have 
nothing in my past, nothing that need stand between 
Julia and me.” 

Por a few seconds there was silence. Father 
O’Driscoll was in a difficulty. He had grown attached 
to Sir Murty, and, priest as he was, his human sym- 
pathy went out to him. If it was true that Julia 


THE FLOWN BIED 


801 


returned Sir Murty’s love, and that she had only let 
them rush her into the Convent because she believed 
he had left her, then she ought to know that he had 
come back, and was ready to marry her. A vocation 
which depended on a misunderstanding was no 
vocation. It would be a mockery to give a girl to 
the Convent who would have given herself to a mortal 
lover if he had been ready to accept her. On the 
other hand, was he to be the instrument of taking 
the girl from the Convent and marrying her to a 
Protestant ? 

For a few seconds his brow was clouded. Then 
illumination came to him. O’Kavanagh, watching 
him as one watches a person who carries life and death 
in his hands, saw that illumination, and looked at him 
with parted lips of expectation. 

“ I am going to talk to a wise woman about it,’* 
the priest said, and laid his hand on Sir Murty’s 
shoulder kindly. ‘‘ There are two or three points in 
your favour. One is the scandal. I believe, for some 
people, the scandal would be there still if she was your 
wife to-morrow ; but, at least, it is a reason for making 
her your wife. The second is, that she may have 
entered the Convent under a delusion, and that she 
ought to be given the choice of staying or going when 
she knows the truth. If we decide to tell her, she may 
choose the Convent. Are you prepared for that ? ” 


302 


JULIA 


She will not choose the Convent/' said the lover, 
obstinately. 

Well, lie down there on the sofa and sleep if you 
can, while I am away. You look as though you needed 
it. Come, Jock.” 

The bob-tailed sheep-dog, who was the priest's 
constant companion, got up from the hearthrug and 
followed him. 

Father O’Driscoll took the uphill way that led 
to the Convent. As he met this and that parishioner, 
his greetings were absent-minded. He was wondering 
half-comically what Eeverend Mother would say to 
him, coming on such an errand. Perhaps she would 
shut the door in his face. Why had he not bid Sir 
Murty go off to the O’Kavanaghs and tell them his 
tale, and let them tell Julia if they would, instead 
of bringing him into such an imbroglio? Yet the 
thought of Sir Murty looking at him as though he 
were his providence somehow warmed the priest’s 
heart. Poor little Julia, too, whom he had thought 
upon as a martyr. How it would silence the liars 
to see Julia Lady O’Kavanagh! They would be 
humble enough then. 

It must be confessed, too, that the thought of a 
Catholic Lady O’Kavanagh and her probable influence 
had some weight in his deliberations. He had never 
been one for urging girls into convents. Like most 


THE FLOWN BIRD 303 

priests, he desired rather that they should marry, and 
give children to the world and souls to the Church. 

Poor little Julia ! who could say that God had not 
given her a special mission when He had let Sir Murty 
love her? Celibate as he was, his thoughts about 
lovers were generous. He believed that the beauty 
and charm of women were so many graces of God, that 
they might win to righteousness and heaven the souls 
of the men who loved them. 

Sister Martha opened the door to him with 
something portentous in her face. 

Yes, he could see Eeverend Mother. In fact, 
Keverend Mother very particularly wished to see him. 
She had sent him a message. Had he not received it ? 
Ah, that good-for-nothing Danny Delaney, who was 
doubtless playing marbles somewhere, with Keverend 
Mother’s note in his pocket ! 

He had not long to wait before Eeverend Mother 
came bustling in. He had taken one or two pinches of 
snuff with great deliberation while he waited for her, a 
sure sign of deep thought. He had acquired the habit 
of snuff-taking in his student days in Eome, but it was 
a habit he kept in check. 

“ So you have not had my letter,” she said, as he 
opened his lips to speak, and you do not know that 
Julia has left us ? ” 

“Julia left you?” he repeated in stupefaction. 


304 


JULIA 


‘'When? Why? No, of course I have not heard 
of it.” 

“I told them you would expect to be consulted, 
but Julia said you would approve. Her father came 
yesterday. He was distracted, poor man ! It seems 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh has been hiding from him a cancer 
in her breast. As soon as Julia heard it she flew 
to me. She was going then, there. She could never 
forgive herself for having left 'them. She shook and 
trembled while she pulled off her cap and veil. Her 
things had to be sent after her. It seems Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh did not know the father was coming. She 
will not forgive us easily. Do you think they will still 
dare to treat the child as they were doing before she 
came to the Convent ? ” 

“ I do not think they will dare,” Father 0 'Driscoll 
said quietly. 

“Denis could nqt persuade his mother to go to 
Dublin to see a specialist. She said she had thought it 
out, and preferred to go before her Maker without having 
His image in her hacked and hewed. He thought she 
would do it out of the love she bears Julia. And, 
Father, I do not think Julia will return to us.” 

“ You think not ? ” 

“ I am never mistaken about a vocation. Julia is 
the sweetest child, but she has no real vocation. I did 
not mean it to go as far as her reception. I thought 


THE FLOWN BIRD 305 

we might have kept her till those wicked people had 
ceased to slander her, poor lamb/* 

“ I dare say the grandmother was not altogether 
weU pleased when Julia came walking in to her,** 
rather O’Driscoll said, with a smile. 

**She was too anxious for the child to be a nun. 
It never does any good, that kind of anxiety. The last 
day she was here she was talking of Julia’s wedding- 
dress. She wanted white poplin, and had sent to 
Atkinson’s of Dublin for patterns. Wonderful old 
woman ! I thought she looked grey and old. But she 
betrayed no sign of suffering. She would talk of 
nothing but Julia’s wedding-dress.” 

“Ah well,” said the priest, enigmatically. “She 
had better go on talking of Julia’s wedding-dress.” 


X 


CHAPTER XXVI 


‘'BELOVED, I HAVE BEOUQHT YOU BOSES ” 

In the afternoon Father O'Driscoll conld not resist 
going to see his parishioners at the Keep. He had 
sent off Sir Murty, after a sleep into which the young 
gentleman had fallen on hearing that Julia was out of 
the Convent, that he might repair the dishevelled 
appearance he presented after being up all night. 

“If you asked her now, Sir Murty, she might 
perhaps say ‘Xo* to you,” he said roguishly. “To 
be sure, you’re twice the man you were when I laid 
eyes on you this morning ; still, a little smartening up 
in the circumstances might be desirable. You see, 
you’re generally such a dandy as we are little accus- 
tomed to, and ” 

“ Don’t make any more uncomplimentary remarks,” 
Sir Murty said, blushing boyishly. “I suppose I’d 
better get back to Moyle by the fields, where I’m less 
likely to be met.” 

To tell the truth, he took the field-path, not lest 
people should wonder at him, unshaven, unkempt, in 
the heavy mourning clothes of yesterday, but lest they 


“BELOVED, I HAVE BROUGHT YOU ROSES” 307 


should be scandalized by the exhilaration of his step, 
by the lover’s joy which he felt must be ridiculously 
apparent in his face. 

As he set out, a new man, for the walk to the 
Keep, he remembered that last night he had made an 
appointment with Mr. Craven for the afternoon. Well, 
Craven must wait. A man who was going to talk of 
love could not be expected to think of business. Ko 
matter what depended on it, he would have to go to 
Julia and make sure before another night fell that she 
was his. Heavens ! what a night last night had been ! 
What things he had suffered ! 

He remembered a speech of the dear old man, who 
was so grateful for a little common humanity — so 
O’Kavanagh put it — after years of neglect. “ My dear 
boy,” Sir Jasper had said, there will be a special 
blessing. Mark my words, there will be a special 
blessing for your goodness to me.” 

Was this the direction the blessing had taken, that 
his love should be blest ? Why, then, how beneficent 
was the Hand that had directed him, although last 
night he had raged against it in a helpless rebellion ! 

As he went out by the long front of Moyle, a 
cluster of late roses, which the wind last night had 
unfastened from the wall, touched his cheek with wet 
sweetness. 

On a momentary impulse he took out a penknife 


308 


JULIA 


and cut off the roses. Not for Julia. His way would 
take him past Moyle Abbey. He would lay them on 
the old man’s new grave, the dear old man, who, lying 
out there in the wind and rain, was not forgotten in 
the hour of his heir’s joy. 

He went springily over the pale wide fields that 
came after his own park-land, where Denis O’Kava- 
nagh’s few bullocks were feeding. The late autumn 
sunshine lay in chilly gold on the sodden grass, and 
the hedgerows, red with briar-leaves and haw-berries 
and the fruit of the briar. A curlew called somewhere 
in the lonely distance. On a blackthorn bush at the 
entrance to the Abbey a robin was singing. 

An instant, and he heard the sharp barking of a 
dog inside the Abbey, and suddenly a small Irish 
terrier charged furiously at him, the fury changing to 
joyous excitement when the dog recognized him ; it 
was Julia’s dog, Body. 

And there was Julia herself. She had been before- 
hand with him in thinking of Sir Jasper’s grave. The 
bare mound of clay was heaped with wreaths and 
crosses, the conventional tributes from the florist’s that 
in a few days would be brown and unsightly. Already 
they showed the traces of the night’s rain. 

She stood, with lips a little apart, staring at him 
palely. She had a trowel in her hand. At the head of 
the grave was the bare stem of a rose-tree she had planted. 


** BELOVED, I HAVE BROUGHT YOU ROSES” 309 

“ I used to see him about in the mountains, she 
said, her eyes dilating as though she were frightened. 

I always felt so sorry for him. I hope you’ll excuse 
me, Mr. Murty.” ^ 

“What have you been doing to yourself?” he 
cried, in a tender anguish. “ Oh, Julia, my little love, 
how changed you are ! Have you been breaking your 
heart ? And was it for me, child ? ” 

He had forgotten to prepare her — forgotten every- 
thing except that the face he loved had shrunken and 
grown thin, that it bore indelible marks of suffering, 
that the eyes were disproportionately great, that the 
lips were pale and sad. Yes, something had been 
making ravages of her beauty, although at liis words 
the blood had turned her suddenly rosy. 

He had caught her to his breast, forgetting the 
roses he held ; and the sharp sweetness of the crushed 
flowers rose up between them. She rested in his 
embrace with closed eyes, letting him kiss the over- 
transparent lids, and the masses of dark hair with the 
underlying gold in them, and the cheeks that had the 
gold in their darkness. 

“ What did you mean, child,” he cried, in a frenzy 
of delight, “by going into the Convent? Was there 
no lesser barrier you could have erected between us ? 
My love, my dove, my beautiful one ! Why, I would 
have had you out if I had to go to the Pope to procure 


310 


JULIA 


your freedom. Ah, you are lovelier than ever, if you 
are thin, worn for me, beloved ! 

She opened her eyes and looked at him in a 
bewildered way. 

“You are not mocking me?” she said; and her 
voice had the tender trouble of a child’s. 

“Mocking you!” he repeated, with a laugh of 
delight. “How sweet the day is, and I had been 
thinking it autumn. There is nothing here but roses.” 

“ Nothing but roses ? ” she repeated dreamily. “ Yet 
you said I was lovely. You couldn’t mock me, so I 
think you must be deceived. I have always been ugly. 
They used to call me * Yellow Julia ’ when I was a 
child. It used to hurt me dreadfully, so that I crept 
away from them all into a world where there were a 
few people who loved me, so that I wasn’t ugly to 
them. There was my father, and there was Gran, 
and there was Father John. And I never heard of 
my ugliness when I was at the Convent. The nuns 
were too charitable ; and, besides, it is the soul that 
counts. You are deceiving yourself. Sir Murty.” 

“ If I am deceiving myself it is a deception that 
will go on till my dying day,” he said joyously. 
“They made a mistake in those old days. Their 
eyes were dull and coarse. You are Golden Julia, 

like a golden rose, like Why, I had roses in 

my hand for the dear old man. Ah, here they are, 


BELOVED, I HAVE BROUGHT YOU ROSES” 311 


fallen between us. I have brought you roses and 
thorns, Julia. It is love’s way. But the thorns are 
gone, and there are only roses.” 

To Julia it was the music of the spheres. So the 
lovers she had dreamt about talked in those dreams 
which had made her shudder away delicately from the 
actualities of life. She had not dreamt that such 
wooing could ever be for her. Beyond the roses 
crushed against her breast she felt the immense beat- 
ing of his heart, and was frightened for him. 

^*You must not love me like that,” she said, 
putting her palm upon his breast. “ It is bad for any 
one to love so much. Let us go home and tell Gran. 
Poor Gran ! do you know how dreadful a thing has 
happened to her ? ” 

“ I know. We will take her away together. We 
shall have the best advice possible.” 

'' If she will not consent ? But she always believed 
in you.” 

“ I believe she always did,” O’Kavanagh said, with 
humility. He was thinking how much sorrow he had 
innocently brought upon them. ‘‘And now, do you 
think, Julia, she believes in me sufficiently to consent 
to our being married as soon as possible ? Let us go 
up to Dublin and be married there ; and she can see her 
doctor without delay. I am sure Bather O’Driscoll 
would come up and marry us.” 


312 


JULIA 


have only just left the Convent,” Julia re- 
minded him, half terrified and half delighted. 

*^And I have only just lost my dear old uncle,” 
O’Kavanagh said, taking the crushed roses and laying 
them on the grave. know he would not grudge 
me my happiness, and I am very lonely till you come. 
There will be a nine-days’ wonder over your having 
left the Convent. Let them have their two sensations 
together. By the time we are home — for I am going to 
show you something of the beautiful world — they will 
have grown used to the marvels. Beloved, there are 
too many chances of life and death. I am not going 
to take them. If you were to know what I’ve suffered ! 
Is it possible it was only last night ? ” 

She put up her hand with the timidity of a loving 
child, and smoothed his cheek. 

That is the first caress you have offered me,” he 
said delightedly. I hope it is the precursor of better 
things. Come, let us go ; the shadows are closing in.” 

As they turned to leave the Abbey, holding each 
other’s hands, he suddenly remembered Joe Quinlan. 

Do you know who told me about your being in 
the Convent ? ” he asked. “ That poor devil, Quinlan, 
whom I knocked down here once upon a time. He 
had the — misfortune to be in love with you, Julia. 
Upon my word, I pity him.” 

Poor Joe !” she said softly. I don’t think there 


BELOVED, I HAVE BROUGHT YOU EOSES ” 313 


is any harm in Joe. Gran’s opinion of him has 
changed about greatly. There was a time when she 
couldn’t bear him. I suppose he was really in love 
with me. I thought at first he mocked me when he 
called me pretty; and, afterwards, I thought it was 
only his great foolishness.” 

“ All the world will be in love with you when it 
sees you,” he said, gloating over her beauty. “ You’ve 
been out of the sun, little Julia, and you are pale. 
But you will be more golden than the roses presently. 
That poor devil, Quinlan, said you had cheeks like a 
pansy. There was observation there as well as poetry. 
You wiU look lovely in your wedding-dress, with the 
O’Kavanagh rubies on your golden neck. There never 
was a Lady O’Kavanagh as beautiful as you will be.” 

How friendly was the great ruddy glare from the 
kitchen fire as it streamed out into the night. For a 
second the two stood outside, and gazed into the rich 
light and shadow of the big, homely, kindly place. 

Father O’Driscoll was there, talking to Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh, and a couple of Julia’s sisters were 
getting tea ready, going and coming between the 
parlour and kitchen just as on that evening when Sir 
Murty first came. 

“Denis will soon be in,” Mrs. O’Kavanagh said, 
“ and Julia will be with him. He had business in the 
town, and Julia said she would walk on to meet him. 


314 


JULIA 


and, if the darkness fell, would wait for him at a 
roadside cabin. You’d think they could never be 
enough together.” 

He has missed her,” the priest said. 

“We all miss the children when they’re taken away 
from us,” Mrs. O’Kavanagh said, in her sour-sweet way. 
“ If it isn’t the Convent, it’s a husband, maybe ; and 
the Convent is safer. You never know what the 
husband is going to turn out.” 

“We’ll be having a match-making for Julia.” 

Father O’Driscoll took out his little tortoise-shell 
box, and inhaled a pinch of sweet-smelling snuff, while 
he looked from under his eyes at Julia’s grandmother. 

“ There’ll be no match-making for Julia,” the 
grandmother said. “Julia’s not one to have her match 
made. Dear, dear ! I was vexed with Denis when he 
came in, as proud as Punch, and Julia beside him. 
’Twas great nonsense taking her out of the Convent, 
after all the trouble we had in putting her there, too. 
I tell him the best thing he could do — for her — is to 
let her go back to the Convent — presently. To be 

sure ” Her voice fell, and the eavesdroppers in 

the darkness could hear no more. 

Sir Murty put his hand on the half-door, opened it, 
and went in. In the commotion of his entrance, Julia 
fled past him unseen and disappeared in the interior 
of the house. 


BELOVED, I HAVE BROUGHT YOU ROSES” 315 


‘^Ah! I was wondering where you’d got to,” said 
the priest, again taking snuff. “ You didn’t happen to 
meet Julia ? ” 

I hope I’m welcome,” said O’Kavanagh, holding 
out his hand to the old woman, who was suddenly 
agitated. 

''Sure, why wouldn’t you he welcome, sir?” she 
answered, taking his hand, and holding it for a second. 
" 'We’re very sorry for the trouble you’ve had.” 

" Thank you. I was very glad that Denis could do 
as I wished.” 

" He will be in soon.” Mrs. O’Kavanagh looked 
uneasily towards the door. " And Julia — Julia went 
to meet her father. She knew I’d like a talk with 
Father John.” 

" Julia came in with me,” O’Kavanagh said, leaning 
forward and taking the two old capable hands that for 
once were idle. 

His aspect, in her eyes, was very winning. She had 
always been fascinated by this young aristocrat, who 
was of the same blood as herself and was proud of it. 

" Julia came in with me. I believe she has run 
away somewhere. I want you to be very good to me, 
Mrs. O’Kavanagh, and give me Julia. With God’s 
help, she’ll be as safe with me as the Convent could 
keep her.” 

" Sir Murty O’Kavanagh ! You want Julia ? You 


316 


JULIA 


want to marry Julia ? Is it Julia to be Lady O’Kava- 
nagb of Moyle ? ” 

Julia has consented.” 

Mrs. O’Kavanagh looked helplessly from Sir 
Murty’s face to the priest’s. 

‘‘ If Julia has consented, I don’t see what we can 
do, ma’am,” said the priest. “ I don’t suppose Denis 
will forbid the banns. I know he has an old ancient 
kindness for Sir Murty. You’d better be making up 
your mind about those patterns of white poplin you 
had down from Dublin.” 

‘‘ I don’t know where you heard of them,” Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh said, with a flash of her old humour, 
“ Anyhow, I’m sure Eeverend Mother will never forgive 
me. To take Julia out of the Convent yesterday, and 
give consent to her marriage to-day ! ” 

“ To a heretic, too ! ” interjected the priest. 

“There’s one of the patterns,” went on Mrs. 
O’Kavanagh, as though she had not heard him, “ that 
took my fancy. It had little gold shamrocks sprigged 
upon it. They were so small you couldn’t see them 
in the pattern a bit off. But they gave the silk a look 
as if it was powdered with yellow, the same as the 
white lilies will be in July. It wouldn’t have done 
for vestments, or I’d be taking it, I thought. I 
couldn’t let it go out of my hand. I liked it so well.” 

“You can have it now, ma’am,” said Father 
O’Driscoll. 


ENYOI 


317 


ENYOI 

(A portion of a letter from Miss Mary Craven to 
the Hon. James Dacre.) 

***** 

“I saw Helen Grace yesterday. Yon know how 
her loneliness oppressed me, even while we were 
together, especially after Jane had left her and gone 
back to Dublin to marry the greengrocer, whom she 
had rejected long ago because of Helen's twins. She 
will not hear a word against Jane, although I must 
always think the woman's leaving her was unpardon- 
able. She says that I did not see Jane's face when 
she said she must go, because the ^ thinking long ' was 
too much for her. There is always something hard 
about those Northerners. 

However, Helen, after the first shock of that final 
bereavement — you know Jane was so associated with 
those children and her happy time — having lost every- 
thing, as she said, braced herself up to live with 
nothing to live for. I told you how ill she looked 
when I saw her first, although she never could be 


318 


JULIA 


anything but pretty, and in all her grief she has never 
forgotten to be dainty. I know I thought her lovely 
that day in her dull pink gown with its old laces, 
although her poor blue eyes looked as though they had 
been washed white, and all manner of lines had come 
into her dear face. It was so sad, too, to see her with 
a stupid, well-meaning peasant servant, who knew 
none of her ways. I believe she has made herself 
poorer than ever by sending out the brides so well 
provided. I suspect her of sweeping out rooms of 
mornings, and dusting them ; for I am sure Bridget 
does not do it. 

“But now I am going to tell you something so 
tender and touching. You know she went back to her 
neglected garden in the autumn, after Jane left her. 
She says it has saved her reason and her life. I told 
you the despair had gone out of her face. Now the 
resignation has followed it. Yesterday I found her 
among her violets and snowdrops, and her face was the 
very face of hope. 

“ ' What has happened to you, Helen ? ’ I cried. 

* Are they coming home ? * 

“ ' Oh, not that,* she answered. ‘ I shall have to 
wait a long time for that. But I have been thinking 
of something, Mary.’ 

“‘A golden penny for the thoughts that have made 
such a difference in your looks,’ I said ; for I assure 


ENVOI 


319 


you, Jim, her face had lost its wintry beauty, and had 
the beauty of spring. 

“'You see it?' she said. 'Well, it is a thought 
God sent me, out of His kindness, as though He felt 
I had suffered enough. Working here among all the 
little growing things, with all the earth pulsating with 
new life, it came to me like a revelation that I should 
have Ehoda's and Violet’s children here with me. 
They will send them home to me to rear them up 
bonny and strong. It came to me like a revelation; 
and God will not deceive me. There will be children 
in the nurseries over there ' ; and she nodded her head 
towards the house. Looking in that direction, I saw 
the windows of the rooms that had been their nurseries 
set wide open. 

'' ' Yes,' she said, and nodded her dear head. ' I 
have opened them to the sun and the wind. Jane 
locked them up when the children went away as 
though the children were dead. I am going to have 
them thoroughly cleaned out and re-papered. I have 
been looking through the toys that were too dear to 
give away. When the first little lad or lassie comes 
he or she will find the nurseries waiting.' 

''I am like Jane, and think of Helen Grace's 
children as dead. Perhaps when Helen's hour comes, 
and their children are given up to her — think of her 
yearnings to begin all that drudgery over again ! — their 


320 


JULIA 


hearts that have never lived may begin to throb and 
bleed. I remember what your darling mother said, that 
God breaks hearts to remake them ; perhaps the hour 
will come for those two girls. Anyhow, I shall always 
think of Helen with her face upturned to the mild 
February sky, quiet with promises, the smell of the 
fresh earth and the violets about her, waiting to have 
her lost Eden restored to her. 

“You ask of Lady O’Kavanagh. Well, she has 
come back lovelier than ever. Something new has 
come into her beauty. She has become stately without 
losing her humility, wise without losing her simplicity. 
He is more infatuated than ever. Some of the county 
folk were inclined to give her the cold shoulder, but 
Lady Kilmacreddan has called. You know we are 
tremendous chums with Lady Kilmacreddan, since her 
precious boy joined our establishment, and Helen and 
I, to say nothing of the mother, sang her praises one 
whole afternoon when Lady Kilmacreddan was visiting 
us. So Julia’s social success is assured. But, do you 
know, I don’t think he’d know if it wasn’t, nor be a bit 
less enchanted with her ? C H " 3 ^ 

r- 

“It was such a relief to all of us when that 
splendid old Mrs. O’Kavanagh’s trouble proved not to 
be cancer after all, but something unmalignant which 
will not return. I saw her the other day looking 
more eay^e-like than ever. She has the good sense and 


ENVOI 


821 


good taste to wear one of those grand blue cloaks, 
instead of the vulgar things, English-made and shoddy, 
that the people are taking to. She looked magnificent 
enough to be anybody's grandmother. 

As for yourself : so you think you will be quite 
handsome again when Easter comes and brings you 
and our wedding-day. But you were handsome enough 
for me, Jim, even when you were such a sight. Did 
you see any reluctance in me that first day when you 
kissed me ? You said afterwards that if you had 
known I was to be there nothing would have induced 
you to come looking as you did. Well, I saw nothing 
amiss with you then; did you feel that I did when 
I returned your kisses ? For the matter of that, I 
do not know how long I would have waited to hear 
you say, ‘I love you, Mary,’ if it had not been 
that I showed you my love, when I saw your poor 
scarred face and half-blind eyes, so plainly that you 
could not reject me. So your face is almost unpitted 
again. You will be smooth for our wedding. As 
though I cared, my Jim ; as though I should not find 
you beneath any ravages of disease, beyond death 
itself. 

The father and mother do not know what to do 
with themselves for joy since they have learned that 
you are to have the Duke’s Irish estates, and that we 
shall be almost their neighbours. It is the last drop 

Y 


322 


JULIA 


in my own cup of joy ; but — frankly — although papa is 
so enchanted I believe that he pities the Duke. He 
can hardly keep himself from saying that you are too 
unpractical, have too many ideas, to make an Irish 
land-agent, although you might do well enough for 
England.'* 


THE END 


PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLBS. 















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